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quote:"if everyone in the world buys a copy of this game and I am anointed with jewels and cherry boughs and made the ruler of all things, with clothes cast out of diamonds and a retinue of double gnus" -- what's a double gnu? quote:The sparkle of a single gnu will fade in time. You will become jaded unto it. You will begin to witness dullness into it, boredom into it. Whole stables of them, like the kingdoms of the earth themselves, will be as dust to you; will not bring you joy, but only tire you out, drain your pocketbook, and stomp your spirits down: I love Jenna Moran, I really do.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:40
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My IRL friends want to try tabletop rpgs again. They are interested in Shadowrun style setting. I'm not interested in that system. Any good alternatives?
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Oct 30, 2015 23:51
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paradoxGentleman posted:I love Jenna Moran, I really do. Didn't knew she was a YOSPOS Stallman fan.
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Oct 30, 2015 23:54
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Covok posted:My IRL friends want to try tabletop rpgs again. They are interested in Shadowrun style setting. I'm not interested in that system. Any good alternatives? Marvel Heroic?
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Oct 30, 2015 23:55
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The Bestiary from the oddball Dragonlance: Fifth Age game was unusually good; being in full color and having all Rebecca Guay art will do that.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:01
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Error 404 posted:Marvel Heroic? They're still so fresh they may not respond well to reskinning.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:05
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Covok posted:My IRL friends want to try tabletop rpgs again. They are interested in Shadowrun style setting. I'm not interested in that system. Any good alternatives? Technoir? Though that is more Detective Story than High-tech Mercenaries.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:15
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Technoir? Though that is more Detective Story than High-tech Mercenaries. Actually, Cortex+ Leverage (instead of heroic) would work best.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:18
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Covok posted:My IRL friends want to try tabletop rpgs again. They are interested in Shadowrun style setting. I'm not interested in that system. Any good alternatives? I like Interface Zero personally. It doesn't have trolls or magic, but you can port those in from another Savage Worlds setting, probably.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:42
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fool_of_sound posted:I like Interface Zero personally. It doesn't have trolls or magic, but you can port those in from another Savage Worlds setting, probably. They're also kickstarting a Fate version; $1 gets you the draft now.
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Oct 31, 2015 00:46
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Covok posted:My IRL friends want to try tabletop rpgs again. They are interested in Shadowrun style setting. I'm not interested in that system. Any good alternatives? I just saw this go by on G+; it's an account of a Shadowrun PbP using one of the PbtA hacks (Sixth World). It's worth a look. The Sprawl is supposed to get a Shadowrun-ish playlet at some point; but therein game isn't even done yet. https://plus.google.com/+DelosAdamski/posts/Sa1awofabwk
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Oct 31, 2015 01:15
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I dunno. I think cyberpunk loses something when it's not fairly crunchy. It's a gritty setting powered by highly technical skills and specialized equipment.
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Oct 31, 2015 01:18
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I think it would be interesting to have a Cyberpunk that revolved more around the self-destructive themes and hard choices instead of conflict-simulation and lists of fancy tech, but I'm just ideas-guying right now.
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Oct 31, 2015 01:28
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fool_of_sound posted:I dunno. I think cyberpunk loses something when it's not fairly crunchy. It's a gritty setting powered by highly technical skills and specialized equipment. I was going to say, can you really have shadowruns without gear porn?
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Oct 31, 2015 01:36
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I dunno, Feng Shui can do action movies without getting too fetishistic about Gun Porn. I mean the characters might talk about how their guns are modified and equipped with special ammo, but in the end, it still does X damage and they all kill mooks in one good hit, even .22s.
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Oct 31, 2015 01:41
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I dunno, Feng Shui can do action movies without getting too fetishistic about Gun Porn. I mean the characters might talk about how their guns are modified and equipped with special ammo, but in the end, it still does X damage and they all kill mooks in one good hit, even .22s. It's emulating Action Movie over Cyberpunk, though. A big theme in cyberpunk is the power gap that technology creates, including superior technology.
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Oct 31, 2015 01:44
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Cyberpunk is not about how life is becoming increasingly dominated by technology, corporatism, and the struggle to maintain a functioning society in the face of these things, but is about tough choices, self-destruction, and rules-light gaming. *Removes copies of Trouble and Her Friends, Blade Runner, Player Piano, and Bug Jack Barron from carefully-curated cyberpunk collectuon*
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Oct 31, 2015 01:47
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Yeah, but I think its quite possible to do a lightweight cyberpunk game. Molly Millions may talk about how the Onno-Sendai Cyberspace 7 is The Best, but that doesn't mean we need to count how many gigaherz are in the deck's processor or whatever.
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Oct 31, 2015 01:48
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Yeah, but I think its quite possible to do a lightweight cyberpunk game. Molly Millions may talk about how the Onno-Sendai Cyberspace 7 is The Best, but that doesn't mean we need to count how many gigaherz are in the deck's processor or whatever. You can do anything rules-light, but that doesn't mean you should.
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Oct 31, 2015 01:52
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Yeah, but I think its quite possible to do a lightweight cyberpunk game. Molly Millions may talk about how the Onno-Sendai Cyberspace 7 is The Best, but that doesn't mean we need to count how many gigaherz are in the deck's processor or whatever. You might be able to get away with it without sacrificing the importance of the tech if you, over the course of the campaign, had different pieces of character gear become obsolete/stop being superior, requiring the characters to have to keep spending money to keep up with/stay ahead of the curve.
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Oct 31, 2015 02:01
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'Technology as an addiction' is the central self-destructive theme in cyberpunk, after all.
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Oct 31, 2015 02:08
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If there's hardly any rules, how do you have any difference in stakes between phreaking a satphone so you can make free calls, and ICARUS FOUND YOU!!!!! RUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!! without having the game be almost purely fiat? Cyberpunk involves a broad range of possibilities that mean you pretty much need a big, rigorous rule set to do it justice.
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Oct 31, 2015 02:56
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Effectronica posted:If there's hardly any rules, how do you have any difference in stakes between stealing someone's car, and IMMORTAN JOE FOUND YOU!!!!! RUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!! without having the game be almost purely fiat? Post Apocalypse involves a broad range of possibilities that mean you pretty much need a big, rigorous rule set to do it justice. Effectronica posted:If there's hardly any rules, how do you have any difference in stakes between sneaking past the guards, and SMAUG FOUND YOU!!!!! RUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!! without having the game be almost purely fiat? Epic Fantasy involves a broad range of possibilities that mean you pretty much need a big, rigorous rule set to do it justice. 
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Oct 31, 2015 03:07
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You may have said "you need to eat food to live," but did you know changing "food" to "deadly poison" you're a liar? Really makes you think...
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Oct 31, 2015 03:12
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Apocalypse World and Dungeon World are, in fact, examples of the kind of problem I'm talking about. Thank you for your no-doubt good-faith well-reasoned extremely-hyphenated contri-bution. Game on.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:20
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Countblanc posted:You may have said "you need to eat food to live," but did you know changing "food" to "deadly poison" you're a liar? Really makes you think... Did you know that unless you have a skill focus, feat tree, and prestige class dedicated to it, you can't actually talk to anyone in this game about talking and playing pretend? Whoa...
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Oct 31, 2015 03:22
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Countblanc posted:You may have said "you need to eat food to live," but did you know changing "food" to "deadly poison" you're a liar? Really makes you think...   
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Oct 31, 2015 03:22
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Error 404 posted:Did you know that unless you have a skill focus, feat tree, and prestige class dedicated to it, you can't actually talk to anyone in this game about talking and playing pretend? gently caress off back to Gaia Online with that poo poo.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:23
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Effectronica posted:gently caress off back to Gaia Online with that poo poo. Imp zone is calling Effie...
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Oct 31, 2015 03:24
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Fursonally, I enjoy it when people engage in passive-aggressive behavior like making sniping posts and then running away from any sort of intellectual engagement, and it only gets better when the furious retreat is communicated through piling passive-aggressiveness on top of passive-aggressiveness. Not that I'm going to name names, because I am committed to the bad joke that this post is built around.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:27
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*Bangs in the retards Effectronica and Error 404 heads together like they were Larry and Curly*
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Oct 31, 2015 03:32
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This is true, but equipment lists don't do much to back up the self-destruction aspect, aside from games that use Humanity and / or Essence costs for cyberware. And even then it tends to be "well, I guess I can't specialize in making friends or casting spells, guess I better just focus on killing dudes". I mean, I played in a Cyberpunk 2020 game in which we had homebrewn stats for pretty much any modern gun you can think of. I get the appeal. It's cool to shop. I like shopping for rad stuff for my shooty cyborg commando. But Gibson, one of the biggest influences in cyberpunk in gaming, was... well, it's easiest just to let him say it.William Gibson posted:I'm looking for images that supply a certain atmosphere. Right now, science and technology seem to be very useful sources. But I'm more interested in the language of, say, computers than I am in the technicalities. On the most basic level, computers in my books are simply a metaphor for human memory: I'm interested in the hows and whys of memory, the ways it defines who and what we are, in how easily memory is subject to revision. When I was writing Neuromancer, it was wonderful to be able to tie a lot of these interests into the computer metaphor. It wasn't until I could finally afford a computer of my own that I found out there's a drive mechanism inside- this little thing that spins around. I'd been expecting an exotic crystalline thing, a cyberspace deck or something, and what I got was a little piece of a Victorian engine that made noises like a scratchy old record player. That noise took away some of the mystique for me; it made computers less sexy. My ignorance had allowed me to romanticize them. Focusing on technicalities in cyberpunk is a natural thing to do - if there's all this technology, it's the way of our people (that is, nerds) to give everything a name, classify it, package it, and put a price tag on it. But it may be missing the forest for the trees.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:34
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:*Bangs in the retards Effectronica and Error 404 heads together like they were Larry and Curly* Good call. Alien Rope Burn posted:This is true, but equipment lists don't do much to back up the self-destruction aspect, aside from games that use Humanity and / or Essence costs for cyberware. And even then it tends to be "well, I guess I can't specialize in making friends or casting spells, guess I better just focus on killing dudes". I mean, I played in a Cyberpunk 2020 game in which we had homebrewn stats for pretty much any modern gun you can think of. I get the appeal. It's cool to shop. I like shopping for rad stuff for my shooty cyborg commando. That Gibson quote doesn't mean what you think it means. And anyway, that's more an issue with how the gear buying actually ends up working; the gear list is part of the problem there though. Basically, unless you can somehow force players to constantly hunger for new, better, and more equipment, your game isn't quite hitting the cyberpunk relationship with technology. It's an arms race on a personal level, and falling behind mean a life in the gutter.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:38
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You do know that Gibson wasn't the only person to write cyberpunk, and that, in fact, if you look at the genre as a whole and its major precursors, you'll find that a lot of it is about technology as a force acting on society, which requires an understanding of the technology involved so that you can explore the social phenomena that result. Even something kinda trashy like Bubblegum Crisis has a lot of that going on, along with corporatism as a force on society.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:41
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fool_of_sound posted:That Gibson quote doesn't mean what you think it means. What do I think it means? I'm curious now.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:42
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Effectronica posted:You do know that Gibson wasn't the only person to write cyberpunk, and that, in fact, if you look at the genre as a whole and its major precursors, you'll find that a lot of it is about technology as a force acting on society, which requires an understanding of the technology involved so that you can explore the social phenomena that result. Even something kinda trashy like Bubblegum Crisis has a lot of that going on, along with corporatism as a force on society. And that requires a huge, complicated/detailed ruleset why?
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Oct 31, 2015 03:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:What do I think it means? That technology in cyberpunk is primarily a metaphor through which to explore other themes, and is therefore just window dressing. It's missing the core -punk part of the theme: inequality, and specifically how free-market technology exacerbates inequality. It's such a central theme that even cyberpunk heroes have to 'play the game' in order to compete; they have to pay for the latest weapons, constantly upgrade their computers, and chop of pieces of their body to replace with expensive cyberware, in order to fight the faceless forces which produce all those things. Self-destruction and hard choices are just grittiness, common to many different genres. Unless it focuses on inequality and oppression, it isn't -punk anything.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:50
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Galaga Galaxian posted:And that requires a huge, complicated/detailed ruleset why? If you write out what a piece of technology can and can't do, you have written a yucky set of rules. If you want your game to be able to support a wide range of technologies, you will thus have a large rule set as a consequence. If you want your game to be able to support meaningful progression from mildly futuristic examples of things people do today to Deus Ex or Snow Crash stuff about the future of humanity, you will also need to understand how they interact with each other, which will make this rule set have some complexity, to deal with the sort of interesting interactions that emerge when you have all these cool toys to play with.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:51
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Enough! Steampunk > Cyberpunk.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:52
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Enough! Steampunk > Cyberpunk. Wrong.
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Oct 31, 2015 03:54
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