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Cortex+. It's a system you hear of from time to time, going through periods of darling status contrasted with barely anyone even knowing of it. Designed as a successor to the original Cortex system by Margaret Weis Productions(hereafter referred to as MWP), Cortex+ isn't so much a single bare system as it is a toolkit that you can gently caress with, with a few key design elements that keep it all together. So, How do you play? Every Cortex+ system uses different stats, but they all basically interact with them in the same way. You're going to have usually two major sets of stats, rated in polyhedrals, typically from d4 to d12. You're going to take a relevant stat's die from each of the sets, plus dice for various circumstantial advantages, roll them all and add the two highest. The big thing is, these sets of stats are not the normal ones you'd expect. They can be, but typically they aren't. But to explain that further, let's look at some of the games under the Cortex+ engine. Smallville Roleplaying Game: You punched me in the Lois Lane. Smallville, if you're not familiar, is what happens when you put Clark Kent's days back in the country town of Smallville in the format of a CW show. If you're not familiar with CW, imagine a low-key soap opera. Fewer evil twins, more shirtless abs. Now add superpowers, and give the whole thing a big stir. Now, supers games are always tricky, especially if you want to focus on the drama. What Smallville does is instead of worrying about whether or not you can benchpress a car, it focuses on the same things as the show; the people and morals that matter to you. How's it do that? Well, Smallville's two key stats are Values and Relationships. You take your thoughts on how important, say, Justice is with your thoughts on how much you care about Lois Lane, throw in some bonuses from superpowers, and you have your pool with which to strike Lex Luthor in his bald loving face. Smallville was the first Cortex+ system, and while a bit wordy, it got a fair few people really thinking. Between its focus on "roleplaying like you're on TV" and encouraging players to work at cross purposes, an engine where advancement comes from biting off more than you can chew, and a relationship map builder that gets your setting and drama ready to boil over from the word go, the Smallville RPG is a fine game indeed. Leverage Roleplaying Game: Luckily, I'd come prepared. So the Smallville system's all well and good. But what if you don't want to yell at your fellow player for dating the football quarterback even though he doesn't respect him? What if you want to bump knuckles and go jack someone's poo poo as a well-oiled team, like the lovechild of a modern-day Robin Hood and an entire spec-ops squad? Well then, my friend, you want Leverage. Licensed off another TV show, Leverage portrays skilled and interesting individuals thieving from, tricking, and otherwise loving over the powerful people for the benefit of those who have nowhere else to go. And by default, that's exactly what the Leverage RPG portrays. Unlike Smallville's drama-tastic stat set, Leverage uses Attributes and Roles. Mixing the more traditional stats like Agility, Vitality and Strength with the looser roles like Grifter, Hitter and Mastermind, Leverage brings a world where one person's best at everything, but they're all really loving good at anything. Also unlike Smallville, Leverage focuses on getting you going quick. Whereas Smallville wants you to take an entire session to just set the stage, get everyone's characters generated and interlaced, Leverage wants you to pick a specialty or two, your GM to set up a person with a problem, and go. Though not the humongous splash Smallville was, Leverage is still a fantastic system and one worth turning to. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Holy Incorrect Reference, Batman! So Smallville's great for a dramatic game that probably has superpowers. And Leverage is great for a heisty action game that has mostly normal folks. But what do you do if you want to just be Iron Man and punch a dude for....Well I'm sure he did something. What then? Well, my friend, you need Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, or MHR. A game built first and foremost around being superheroes in the Marvel universe, MHR cuts right to the chase. It gives you pregens of just about everybody involved in various events, in the iteration seen in those events, and lets you just pick them up and jump into the mess as Wolverine or Spider-Man or whoever. As for the stats? Well...That's where MHR gets a little weird and fiddly. See, instead of having two raw core stats, MHR uses Affiliations and then...Other stuff. Affiliations are whether you're in the conflict alone, with one other hero, or as part of a group. And then you have your Powers, or if you're more Hawkeye-ish, you might focus more in Specialties. And all of these then have extra abilities you can do to interact with your dice pool, bumping it up and down and in all directions. There are two main flaws to MHR. Well, within the text. The first is that it's laid out a bit iffily. While the system is fairly easy to grasp, the books don't do the best job of explaining it. The second is that it focuses on playing the Marvel heroes, not your own dude(tte). There is some information on building your own character, but instead of hard mechanics, you mostly get advice on how to eyeball it. The system is balanced fairly well, with weaker abilities giving you more shiny plot points to do things with than stronger ones, so an eyeballed character typically works just fine. Despite those quirks, the system is solid, fast-paced, and rich in content. If you can get that content. Which brings us to one problem with Cortex+, and its licensed ways. Availability: A glass two-thirds empty. Cortex+ is pretty cool, I bet you're thinking. There's just one problem. Smallville and MHR both had their licenses expire. You can get used copies, but MWP cannot legally sell you a PDF or new hardcopy of either system. MHR particularly had its license pulled with less than a month between the announcement and all the books being pulled. Entirely complete, ready to go supplements were lost into the ebbs of time, never to be seen until someone leaks them into the land of . If that were where the story ended, that would be that. A nearly dead system left only with a shadow of its former glory, this thread would be as useless as one on digital gaming with Rifts. But if the story ended there, I wouldn't still be talking. Cortex+ Hacker's Guide: What happens if I make the heart pump directly into the lungs? Originally intended as a simple guide to various quirky things people had done with the Cortex+ engine, the Cortex+ Hacker's Guide instead became the new corebook. Thanks to surpassing several Kickstarter stretch goals, the book contains not only various hacks and new settings, but license-free, genericized versions of Smallville, Leverage, and MHR, now called Drama, Action, and Heroic. If you're wanting to get into Cortex+, this book is gobsmackingly good for what you pay. Covering everything from a setting that's Mass Effect with the serials filed down in the Action system, to using Heroic to play D&D-esque fantasy archetypes, to a mecha setting with the mechanical focus of Drama to keep it centered on the people in the cockpits, the Cortex+ Hacker's Guide has to be seen to be believed. The only problem it possibly has is that those hacks were written for the original systems, instead of referring to the genericized versions in the book. But once you get past that(and it's not a hard transition), they're solid gold. But that's not all that's out there. MWP continues to move forward with the system, and their next game is revisiting some familiar territory for them. Firefly: Praise your sudden but inevitable update. Now, there was a Serenity RPG. It used the old original Cortex system, which is a fair bit clunkier. This is not that RPG. Firefly runs off of a tweaked version of the Cortex+ Action variant, fiddling and reskinning it for a good old space-western. With previews already out and the full book fast on its way, this is looking to be one well worth your time. Links: The final frontier. So, you want to get some of these games. Let's talk options. -The Smallville RPG is limited to copies off of Amazon or Ebay. If you want PDFs, I can't help you. -The Leverage RPG, on the other hand, is still available in digital. Hardcopy, too. -Marvel Heroic? Used only. Good luck. -The Hacker's Guide is currently PDF only. Hardcopies are coming to my knowledge, though. -The Firefly RPG currently just has this preview document, though from what I hear it's more than enough to keep you going for a good while.
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# ? Sep 9, 2013 00:04 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 08:53 |
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So to get this thing up and away, I'm loosely cooking some plans to use C+ Action for a Saints Row inspired game. Given that this will likely see a lot of blowing poo poo up and action, my rough plan is to redo the Roles and Attributes with a greater focus on violence. One rough idea is to ditch the normal Attributes entirely, and focus on something that worries more about the how. Whether you're using a rocket launcher or a pistol, sort of thing. Anybody have any thoughts?
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# ? Sep 9, 2013 01:18 |
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I think you could go a long way with SFX that were about collateral damage, creating fires, chain reactions, or You might make a set of standard Complications for police/rival gang hostility that step up with various actions. Alternately you could use them as Timers when you're in areas controlled by other factions - you have to actively do something to deal with them or they'll continue to escalate. This is a good OP. I tried to start a Smallville thread a while back but it sank because nobody but me thinks it's maybe the best RPG of the last 10 years. I wrote a little bit for the Watchtower Report, it was fun. I'll link some Smallville resources later on.
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# ? Sep 9, 2013 06:58 |
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More resources would be fantastic. I mostly only know the books themselves. I'm definitely thinking Complications surrounding the inevitable heat they'll get when they decide to do something like beat a man to death with a dildo-bat. I'm expecting that one to happen a lot, given my players. I think I've got my tweaked Roles figured out, at least: quote:-The gunner. Everyone can shoot, but the gunner can REALLY loving shoot. You roll your Gunner stat...Well, any time you need to shoot poo poo. Guns, rocket launchers, whatever. Put a greater focus on the violence, and kind of stripped out stealth entirely. I figure these guys are just about never going to sneak. Ever.
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# ? Sep 9, 2013 21:38 |
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Are you going a straight up Saint's Row game, or just 'inspired by'? Because if you're doing the former you should come up with some example characters for them. Although you could arguably say Johnny Gat for like all of them but Techie and Face... Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it Yalborap, be sure to post a link or something when you've got it where you want it.
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# ? Sep 10, 2013 01:31 |
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More inspired by. The actual setting is sort of Tenra Bansho's eternal-war-feudal-continent schtick mounted onto a Saints Row style over-the-top gangsta motif. Different hoods in eternal noble struggle, a futuristic world nonetheless limited to 2013 tech outside of some specific things. I've been toying with some replacement attributes. I'm still not sure about these, I might go back to a more normal list. But let me know what you guys think: quote:-Big poo poo, which is your huge muscles, your rocket launchers, your monster trucks, anything big and huge and smashy, basically. I'm really not sure about the naming, it feels very...Inner 12-year-old. Of course, so does Saints Row at times, sooo....Yeah. What do you guys think? Am I way off base? Yalborap fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Sep 10, 2013 |
# ? Sep 10, 2013 08:03 |
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Sticking with the full inner 12 year old, I have the rough draft of my character sheet done. Since it's mostly for one-shots, I just stripped out talents entirely. I can always mount them back in later, after all. Anybody have any thoughts?
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# ? Sep 17, 2013 09:55 |
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"Discstinctions" is a typo that should be preserved - make everyone write them in the form of album names.
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# ? Sep 18, 2013 03:39 |
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So I was at RinCon this weekend and I got to see Mark Truman run Firefly, which is upcoming in Cortex and it's pretty fuckin' amazing. It does incorporate a little bit from pre-+ Cortex in the form of skills, but maintains the awesome give and take of Smallville and Marvel action orders and stress. I then got to chat with Mark over how it's going since he crashed at my place (yeah I am a namedropper.) The team working on it really sounds like they get what Cortex+ is about big-time. Mark is a huge Apocalypse World fan/nerd so if you want to see what kind of ideas may be making their way into the GMing sections of Firefly, definitely check it out (along with Dungeon World, Monsterhearts, etc.)
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# ? Oct 9, 2013 01:27 |
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JDCorley posted:So I was at RinCon this weekend and I got to see Mark Truman run Firefly, which is upcoming in Cortex and it's pretty fuckin' amazing. Isn't Firefly already done in Cortex as the game Serenity? Are they redoing or was that a different system? Edit: Nevermind, reread OP. Realized I'm dumb.
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# ? Oct 9, 2013 01:35 |
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Yeah...it's interesting because it's the first implementation that I've seen since Serenity/Cortex Minus that returns to using a skillset.
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# ? Oct 9, 2013 03:26 |
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Hopefully the skill system is done better than the original, which was hilariously granular for a series that was literally cross breeding two of the pulpiest genre's ever to take up 40's magazines.
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# ? Oct 9, 2013 05:16 |
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It's definitely way less granular. I didn't get a chance to look at a comprehensive list or anything but the series characters seemed fully fleshed out without having s bunch to sift through.
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# ? Oct 9, 2013 07:16 |
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How well does Cortex+ Drama work if the Leads don't know each other until just before the campaign starts? Obviously the Pilot Episode approach can work here, but I'm more curious about the Pathways Chart; is there any good way to have a strong relationship with someone on your superhero team even though the team has just been formed? (Perhaps you have a really good camaraderie with that person, etc.)
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 05:12 |
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I haven't done too much with Drama, but I think focusing on initial vibes would work well, or how things will look from episode 2 on, as it were.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 05:38 |
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The Cortex Plus licenses are out now and at first glance I don't see why anyone would use the "fan" license. It doesn't appear to grant you anything you don't already have under copyright law (game mechanics themselves aren't copyrightable; the game text is, but the license doesn't let you use it), but it puts additional restrictions on you and lets MWP change the terms anytime they want. Am I missing something? Or is this just for the people who don't know game mechanics aren't copyrightable?
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 18:23 |
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inklesspen posted:The Cortex Plus licenses are out now and at first glance I don't see why anyone would use the "fan" license. It doesn't appear to grant you anything you don't already have under copyright law (game mechanics themselves aren't copyrightable; the game text is, but the license doesn't let you use it), but it puts additional restrictions on you and lets MWP change the terms anytime they want. Am I missing something? Or is this just for the people who don't know game mechanics aren't copyrightable? I think that is the reason these licenses exist: for people who don't know game mechanics are not subject to copy right laws. That said, it probably is also so that people are afraid that the creators of Cortex won't try to push their weight around and push you out of the market with threats. Just because mechanics are not subject to copyright laws does not mean you can or want to defend yourself in a court of law over the issue.
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 18:58 |
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In trade for that license, they give you a link on their official web site. It's possible in theory that someone could find that a good deal.
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 19:13 |
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I just released a free Chrono Trigger Event through my Patreon today that uses Cortex Plus. Did I mention it's free? Also, it's free. Go get it.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 19:48 |
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I like Marvel Heroes, especially for the fantastic technical design of the book, but the total inability to make your own hero is a gaping wound in the side of the system. Even if making a superhero is probably the most complicated character creation process for any RPG.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 21:04 |
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What? You can totally make your own hero. It just lacks a rigorous table of point costed abilities to work from, since the game is more budgeted around balance in play. But there was even a random generator on the official site while the license was good.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 21:33 |
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I like Marvel Heroes, especially for the fantastic technical design of the book, but the total inability to make your own hero is a gaping wound in the side of the system. Even if making a superhero is probably the most complicated character creation process for any RPG. Seconding Yalborap. There's a random generator, though it's also easy to stat up your superhero without rolling anything or using a point build system. There's a bit of discussion about this on the MHRPG thread if you're interested.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 21:55 |
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Yeah, don't know where the weird rumor that you can't make your own guy came from. It seems to persist, though, for some reason.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 22:47 |
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If you fancy something a bit more concrete than the random roller or just eyeballing it, here's a point based system that seems fairly robust. I've been using it for costing components for my Coretex Heroic Metal Gear Rising hack.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 23:07 |
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JDCorley posted:Yeah, don't know where the weird rumor that you can't make your own guy came from. It seems to persist, though, for some reason. Mostly because the books never actually give you any advice on how to make your own characters beyond the random character generator, and even then it isn't that good at explaining what the various SFX and limits represent fictionally. If there's one thing I hope they do better if/when they make a generic version, it's that.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 23:14 |
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There is a good-sized chunk of the book about making characters not represented in the game already, the only real difference is that you aren't working off pre-existing material like the writer assumes. you can easily make your own character, you just need to come up with them and then stat them up rather than inventing them through character generation.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 23:27 |
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Mostly because the books never actually give you any advice on how to make your own characters beyond the random character generator, and even then it isn't that good at explaining what the various SFX and limits represent fictionally. If there's one thing I hope they do better if/when they make a generic version, it's that. Yeah, this is definitely something I would've wanted from MHR. It didn't have to be extremely in-depth, but some ideas as to how to do character creation from scratch. I know I had a few frustrated moments with the game, as random PbP GMs would decide somewhat arbitrarily who would be the high-powered, low-powered, etc in a group, and how that doesn't work so well when there's no solid reasoning on either side. Yalborap posted:awesome character sheet More! More! That actually looks like it'd be a lot of fun. Then again, I always thought Leverage could be a lot of fun if you could get 6 people in the same place for a longer campaign. If you stepped away from the heist theme more, or replaced it with more Saints Row-style robberies, the need to have a good number of people could probably go down easier.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 08:15 |
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Captain Hats posted:If you fancy something a bit more concrete than the random roller or just eyeballing it, here's a point based system that seems fairly robust. I've been using it for costing components for my Coretex Heroic Metal Gear Rising hack. Tell me more of your Metal Gear Rising hack. Tell me everything.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 10:57 |
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Yalborap posted:Tell me more of your Metal Gear Rising hack. Please, please tell me that the mechanics are in a chapter titled "Rules of Nature".
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 13:36 |
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Mostly because the books never actually give you any advice on how to make your own characters beyond the random character generator, and even then it isn't that good at explaining what the various SFX and limits represent fictionally. If there's one thing I hope they do better if/when they make a generic version, it's that. Sure it does. Pages 60-115 covers what datafiles (character sheets) are made up of, including guidelines, benchmarks, and descriptions of traits. Specifically, pages 110-115 talk about how to make new datafiles, AKA making new characters. You also have a ton of examples in the book including but not limited to a whole bunch of pregenerated characters. You can mix and match any of this. What the game doesn't do (and the random datafile generator tries to assist with) is help you make a character when you don't have any idea what character you want to play.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 14:55 |
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boymonster posted:Sure it does. Pages 60-115 covers what datafiles (character sheets) are made up of, including guidelines, benchmarks, and descriptions of traits. Specifically, pages 110-115 talk about how to make new datafiles, AKA making new characters. You also have a ton of examples in the book including but not limited to a whole bunch of pregenerated characters. You can mix and match any of this. What the game doesn't do (and the random datafile generator tries to assist with) is help you make a character when you don't have any idea what character you want to play. I'll be honest, I completely forgot about that part. I still think my point stands, though. The section on making power sets still doesn't teach you how to make good power sets beyond telling you to look at the existing power sets for examples. Yeah, the checklist is better than nothing, but I wouldn't trust someone completely new to MHR to make a character that isn't kind of bad with it. Basically, I want a page I can point at that shows why characters are made the way they are instead of having to read through all the rules multiple times until they all click and I figure out why characters are made the way they are for myself.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:12 |
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JDCorley posted:Yeah, don't know where the weird rumor that you can't make your own guy came from. It seems to persist, though, for some reason. boymonster posted:Sure it does. Pages 60-115 covers what datafiles (character sheets) are made up of, including guidelines, benchmarks, and descriptions of traits. Specifically, pages 110-115 talk about how to make new datafiles, AKA making new characters. You also have a ton of examples in the book including but not limited to a whole bunch of pregenerated characters. You can mix and match any of this. What the game doesn't do (and the random datafile generator tries to assist with) is help you make a character when you don't have any idea what character you want to play. Because even in this section, basically all the book is telling you to do amounts to "Just make it up! Should it be more powerful or less powerful? You decide! It'll be fine. Trust us!" Which is entirely untrue. If I'm remembering right, there's no constraints preventing you from making a charatcer with a powerset called "Instant Death" with every beneficial SFX at d12. Or for that matter, a pair of these powersets, to get more dice in every pool.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:34 |
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Blasphemeral posted:Because even in this section, basically all the book is telling you to do amounts to "Just make it up! Should it be more powerful or less powerful? You decide! It'll be fine. Trust us!" Which is entirely untrue. I'm not worried about stuff like that, and neither should you. All it takes to deal with stuff like that is to ask people not to make stuff that is really far outside the game's conceptual power level, and if they're trying to come in with Omnipotent Man they're probably not the kind of person you should be playing a supers game with anyway. What I'm worried about is people making characters that are just weak. I mean, look at the slightly altered Surge I made for sion's most recent game. I knew I made a weak character weaker going in, but I didn't realize how much weaker until after the picks were already made. I didn't realize that I removed her only way to safely have a dice pool that isn't 3d8 without giving her anything to make up for it. I didn't realize how important having a nice range of specialties is when you don't have big impressive powers. So, I ended up making a character that wouldn't be able to do much of anything even if she did get in, just because I didn't have how to make a good MHR character as figured out as I do now. I'm not asking for a deep character creation system, because the system really is pretty self-balancing if you're playing with reasonable people. I just want more advice so it's harder to gently caress it all up.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 19:56 |
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Did anyone ever make a power index of which characters have what powers? I think something like that could make it easier to visualize what the different power levels are. A discussion as to -how- they made some of the characters would also be nice.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 21:32 |
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Lurks With Wolves posted:I'm not worried about stuff like that, and neither should you. All it takes to deal with stuff like that is to ask people not to make stuff that is really far outside the game's conceptual power level, and if they're trying to come in with Omnipotent Man they're probably not the kind of person you should be playing a supers game with anyway. Lurks With Wolves posted:...the system really is pretty self-balancing if you're playing with reasonable people. I just want more advice so it's harder to gently caress it all up. Just because a system is pretty forgiving of mistakes doesn't mean it isn't hurt by not having a real character creation ruleset.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 21:36 |
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Blasphemeral posted:Stuff I can't argue against. Tried to think of an argument that wasn't just me being overly attached to MHR being the crunchiest superhero game that doesn't have what amounts to a giant point buy system. Couldn't. Tried to think of a character creation system you could attach to MHR that I'd be happy with so I could actually contribute to the conversation. Couldn't do that either. Thought about lifepaths, but there's too many SFX whose power depends on what the rest of the power set is like for me to feel good about anything that would give "+1 SFX" or anything like that. Same reason I don't like the approaches that just give you a bunch of dice to put into stuff, to be honest. Since I can't keep arguing and can't think of anything that could actually contribute at this point, all I can do is apologize for making GBS threads up the thread. So, sorry for making lovely arguments in a thread about three games I really like.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 23:41 |
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So, for those involved in the Cortex Plus Hacking Guide Kickstarter, we've just recently got a bunch of goodies due to the lateness of the physical books. Is there anything worth trying to buy hardcopies of? I'm thinking the new Firefly game, but I've already got hardcopies of all the books that I think they're allowed to sell. What books are still available? On another note, as someone who hasn't gotten to play Leverage for anything more than a one-shot, does having less than 5 people become a noticeable problem? Is it the kind of good problem that ends well (people get more creative, double-up on secondaries, etc) or does it just end up a mess?
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# ? Feb 1, 2014 01:25 |
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Actually try out a character with all d12s sometime. Put them in a team with normal characters and put them up against normal opposition and see what happens. It is off balance, and not that fun, but it is not as far off balance as you might think. Don't just pretend you know what will happen. Or, just pull Thor and Kitty Pryde and see how that goes. The existing characters are indeed made with the "eyeball it!" method. They were made exactly as you will make your characters - with a basic concept and eyeballing the die types. If you like the existing characters, you like the method in the book. edit: spellins JDCorley fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Feb 3, 2014 |
# ? Feb 3, 2014 00:41 |
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Okay, so I'm currently playing in a Leverage PbP game and am thinking I may want to run one myself soon for my weekly Fate group. The problem is, heist games seem to devolve into giant boring planning sessions and these cause me some level of frustration. I don't want people to think like they have to plan everything all the time which seems hard to do except in an aggressive "stop it!" manner. Are there more subtle things I can do? Can any of these transfer to the player side?
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# ? Mar 9, 2014 23:54 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 08:53 |
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Have you got the Fate Worlds Volume 2? It literally contains a chapter written by Leverage executive producer on how to do heist games.
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# ? Mar 10, 2014 00:18 |