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Evil Mastermind posted:I ran a pretty lengthy campaign in a sky island world that had the PCs as a pirate crew that was slowly morphing into a trading fleet. Reign is best for games where the PCs are in a situation where they can build power slowly over the standard murderhoboing.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:59
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Speaking of Greg Stolze's settings …in Spaaace! is one of my favorite RPG reads of all time it's such a fun take on Scifi and i love it.
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Apr 14, 2014 23:37
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Elfgames posted:Speaking of Greg Stolze's settings …in Spaaace! is one of my favorite RPG reads of all time it's such a fun take on Scifi and i love it. Dinosaurs... In Spaaace! is a fun setting with a rules set that never made any loving sense to me. Luckily, we have Fate which I think is what he was trying to design.
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Apr 15, 2014 04:26
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Trying to wrap my head around Wild Talent's Gadgeteering process. Can someone walk me through it?
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May 2, 2014 21:00
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psychopomp posted:Trying to wrap my head around Wild Talent's Gadgeteering process. Can someone walk me through it? Off the top of my head, it's a power that lets you simulate other powers by temporarily moving "Gadgeteer" dice to temporary powers. You use the "do anything" A/D/U power to simulate stuff. You could replace Gadgeteering with alchemy or magic or whatever. So you have 10HD of "Gadgets" and you split them into 4HD of Flubber Shoes and 6HD of Flying Car, and you spend willpower to give those powers extras.
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May 2, 2014 21:04
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Is that 10d for all three qualities (A, U, D) or 10d for each quality? I'm assuming the former. Someone asserted the latter. And it says it requires time and a workshop (and has the Delay flaw) - what kind of time scale are we talking? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?
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May 2, 2014 21:43
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So, hey guys. This seems to be the Unknown Armies thread, so... I got Unknown Armies about a week ago and I've decided to run a one-shot that might possibly blossom into a full campaign if my players are interested. Who knows. I'm making pregens for them, because none of them have played UA before or even have the book. The plot is a "kids discover some supernatural poo poo going down and work to solve it" sort of deal. What sort of stats should a kid protagonist have? Should I just give them standard starting character stats, or lower them? They're going to have some help from a few adults (unless things go very bad) but the climax is going to be centered entirely around them. The supernatural poo poo is a werewolf (or possibly a weredog). Also, any tips for running UA?
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May 3, 2014 18:01
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Yuki Akuma posted:So, hey guys. This seems to be the Unknown Armies thread, so... I got Unknown Armies about a week ago and I've decided to run a one-shot that might possibly blossom into a full campaign if my players are interested. Who knows. Character stats in Unknown Armies are low enough that failure happens a lot. I'd be wary about lowering the stats much more than the recommended default. Having the climax be a werewolf seems like kind of a waste of what makes UA special. UA is all about symbolic weirdness and the hosed-up side of the modern world, not retreading horror tropes you and your players will definitely have seen before. If you have a cool twist on it or just really like werewolves, go for it, but keep in mind that you'll be missing out on a chance to sell to your players what really makes UA special. Having the characters be kids also cuts off a lot of potential Adept schools, most of which require the player to have some serious independent agency to go chase down charges (or get hammered). That said, the idea of a 12-year-old Plutomancer in a little tailored suit is pretty funny, so I guess that works too. I'd recommend looking at some of the prewritten adventures (the sourcebook... Hush, I think? has a bunch of them) to get a better sense of what UA is really about. UA has the best published adventures for any game, ever.
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May 3, 2014 18:40
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It's gonna be street level - none of the PCs know much, if anything, about magick. I wanted to use a werewolf because the whole "retroactive" nature of their transformations strikes me as a pretty good way to set up a mystery, and it also introduces the characters to the idea of demonic possession. If the game becomes a full campaign I'm going to be jumping ahead a few years each session until the characters are adults. I just like stories about children finding out the world is even weirder than they thought, and then seeing the repercussions later in their lives. I'll definitely track down some of the official prewritten adventures! Thanks for the tips.
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May 3, 2014 19:17
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One of the more important things to remember is that UA is designed around the idea of "don't roll the dice unless there's an actual consequence for failure". If a character isn't under pressure and/or failure won't have a real immediate consequence, then the character just does it.
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May 3, 2014 20:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:One of the more important things to remember is that UA is designed around the idea of "don't roll the dice unless there's an actual consequence for failure". If a character isn't under pressure and/or failure won't have a real immediate consequence, then the character just does it. In fact, the single most important/misunderstood rule in the book is probably the minor/significant/major skill check split. Write that poo poo down, because you're going to have a fuckload of whiffs otherwise.
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May 3, 2014 22:36
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Is there any news about the rumored third edition of UA? That game is amazing but the rules are not very good (sanity system being the amazing exception)
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May 5, 2014 15:03
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The *balance* of some of the powers isn't good, but I would strongly disagree that the core mechanics are bad. Your best source for UA3 rules is probably Stolze's twitter at this point. 
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May 5, 2014 15:27
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inklesspen posted:Ah! I overlooked that on the first time through because it looked like more setting stuff. After filing off the setting serial numbers, it looks like the three suggestions there are "courtly intrigue using companies instead of PCs", "underworld thieves doing a heist", and "poo poo let's be pirates". I guess that's helpful? inklesspen posted:Well, I only have Enchiridion, which is setting-less. I'm looking at building something out of Final Fantasy XII's Ivalice, which has this whole "clans" setting thing that should be pretty easy to use for companies. At which point I basically just have to make sure the PCs have actual goals instead of being shlubs who meet in a tavern, then see who those goals run up against. Squidster posted:I think Greg - awesome dude as he is - is a Big Ideas and a Wild Storyteller guy, and isn't always good at expressing the kind of games you can actually run with his rules. Better Angels, Unknown Armies, Reign - they're all fantastic, jammed full of wonderful ideas, but what do I do with them? He's not great at providing onramps for newcomers. I was going to write a long winding rant that culminated in a reveal, but that required too much effort and frankly, I was going to be an rear end in a top hat about it on purpose. Instead, I'll just say it: Game of Thrones is basically a REIGN game. Organizations are characters, but the actions of the key personnel definitely matter Nations fight for power, they don't pick sides in a football match between Good and Evil Magic is big, and a part of why the setting is the way it is, but it's not just lying around everywhere Magic is transformative in more ways than one Characters are not superheroes, but a skilled, well-equipped warrior is a real terror There is a lost civilization, but it was an empire that had its capitol wrecked by a natural disaster, not a magitech utopia destroyed by the wrath of the gods This fits everything about REIGN, even down to the way the rules for fighting and magic work in practice. I'm not saying you should base your game on GoT or even look to it for inspirations, necessarily, and of course there are a lot of problematic elements in it. But there's a TV show that aligns almost perfectly with REIGN and six million people watch it every week, which is just one of the reasons I do not get this "But what do I do with it" line applied to REIGN. There have been a plenty of RPG settings that failed to be accessible to the players or their characters because, for example, only godlike NPCs matter, or the culture is too intricate, or there are no unstable points of conflict, or the author clutches the setting to their chest like a precious baby duckling, but REIGN is not any of these things. Here is Stolze on his game: quote:Anyhow, REIGN. World War II was never particularly my bag, and though it’s been a swell setting for GODLIKE, I knew that writing tons of support for it would entail tons of research that, while entrancing to many history buffs, would leave me personally glazed and unresponsive. So I turned the ORE to a fantasy setting I’d been contemplating for years (which is, at this stage, nameless). Yeah, every jerk and his nephew has a fantasy setting, but what can I say? Just being able to make stuff up without worrying about some Internet historian calling your bluff (“the Third Reich didn’t have Xerox machines, you cement-head!”) is tremendously freeing.
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May 5, 2014 15:57
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To be fair, the best game of Reign I've had we were -technically- wandering murderhobos. It's just we were the captains of a band of wandering murderhobos as not-Condotierri in Not-Reniassance italy, running protection rackets on whole cities. "Nice Canals you've got there, Not-Venice, be a shame if something were to happen to them."
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May 5, 2014 16:28
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not saying you should base your game on GoT or even look to it for inspirations, necessarily, and of course there are a lot of problematic elements in it. But there's a TV show that aligns almost perfectly with REIGN and six million people watch it every week, which is just one of the reasons I do not get this "But what do I do with it" line applied to REIGN. Well, in my case, I do not watch GoT. (Because I watched the first two episodes, decided "this show will be about every character I like suffering horribly before being allowed to die", and decided to do something else with my time. YMMV.) Halloween Jack posted:I just don't get it. Are you waiting for REIGN to go "Look, there are some orcs, go kill them, there's a prize?" Absolutely not! I was deliberately asking for examples of what people have done in REIGN because I know Murderhobos Inc is not what it's meant for.
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May 5, 2014 17:22
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I should have said that I didn't mean "you" and in you, inklesspen specifically; I didn't mean to be a condescending jerk. I also forgot that you had said you are working with the REIGN Enchiridion, so you don't have the setting chapters with the accompanying story hooks. If anything, I was responding to Squidsters post--I don't know about Better Angels, but the Heluso & Milonda setting is full of hooks.
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May 5, 2014 17:38
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I had a successful REIGN game where the party played the Queen and her immediate advisors. There was a little D&D style adventuring, but it was quite centered on parties, diplomatic missions, and children as political pawns.
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May 5, 2014 19:54
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Any Enchiridion-only owners (and others obviously) might want to check out the free Nain supplement. Also a band of mercenaries counts as a company, if you want to start somewhere familiar. There's just an assumption that you will want to become something more, and mechanical support for advancement beyond "get bigger sword, hit harder" e: or a roving band of curse solution delivery experts or a troupe of mystery solving minstrels or what have you. The point is you don't have to jump straight in at the company deep end on session 1. Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:14 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 11:01
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I would thoroughly recommend "You run a small, poo poo, failing border town" as a start for Company play. Apparently people love to acquire wealth for towns when they're the ones that benefit.
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May 6, 2014 13:40
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That's exactly what I would do. In the context of H&M (ha!) especially, it allows for some mixed-bag PC groups. The concept works great for an Imperial retinue.
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May 6, 2014 13:46
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How does magic really work in play in Reign? Like, the big siege spells and poo poo like creating lightning storms or anything designed to wreck ships/buildings? Some of the effects just seem really powerful, especially when there's a modifier to keep Eerie from detecting it during the cast time.
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May 10, 2014 06:43
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inklesspen posted:I was deliberately asking for examples of what people have done in REIGN because I know Murderhobos Inc is not what it's meant for. I ran a Reign game for a few months where the players were settling in a small town that had sprung up on the edge of Truil territory to excavate valuable ruins from a forgotten Dindavaran clan (Splicer was in it as a big beardy horse trader). They had to find a good claim, set their followers to digging, come to uneasy truces with the power groups in town, choose whether to trust the native Truils or just kill them, hunt a darkland creature disrupting the excavation, take on a group of slimey claim jumpers trying to steal their riches, and overall just try to become rich. The advantage of running it in Reign was that it was easy to represent the different capabilities of the power groups in town. Also I really like the mechanics: The characters in it feel exactly as hardy and capable as the stories I wanna tell. A dedicated warrior is deadly and can rip a foe apart, but an arrow through the eye and he's done for, so it still pays to seek out talky options (which the group did even more than I expected!). Also the setting came with ready made national tensions which worked well for this idea.
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May 10, 2014 08:14
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Splicer posted:e: or a roving band of curse solution delivery experts or a troupe of mystery solving minstrels or what have you. The point is you don't have to jump straight in at the company deep end on session 1. Back when Reign was the new hotness and I was bored I whipped up a series of pregenerated characters who were essentially a group of assassins, mercenaries, and assorted ne'r-do-wells who masqueraded as a roaming troupe of performers. I don't even know what happened to the file I had it stored on as it was a couple laptops ago but I remember there was a pair of acrobatic twins who used that one martial art designed for two people fighting in tandem, a flame dancer, a jester with the esoteric discipline that basically let you paralyze someone with laughter...one thing I really like about Reign is that it strikes a good balance between breadth of character options and not feeling super bogged down with a million options all over the place.
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May 13, 2014 04:09
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You know, a pretty cool way to do a werewolf story in UA would be to have a Personamancer using Mask of the Beast to help his cult of loser otherkin 'get in touch with their spirit animal'
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May 13, 2014 08:20
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If you are going to Gencon, you can play in a game run by Mr. Stolze http://gencon.highprogrammer.com/gencon-indy-2014.cgi/group/Arc_Dream_Publishing/Greg_Stolze
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May 15, 2014 01:08
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Want to playtest the new campaign for Better Angels? Here's your chance: http://arcdream.com/home/2014/05/no-soul-left-behind-playtesters-needed-for-better-angels/
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May 17, 2014 00:13
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I just read Tim Powers' "On Stranger Tides" and several times I thought "oh, I get how magic in Unknown Armies is supposed to work now!" It seemed like it broke my lingering feeling of "these spells are way too situational, where's my fireballs?" After seeing Powers referred to as an influence so often, I couldn't help backreading street/global/cosmic characters, otherspaces, obsession and taboo, etc onto his writing.
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May 18, 2014 07:32
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If you haven't read Last Call yet; do so. It's basically a fight for Godwalker status, and probably the most obvious Powers influence on UA's mechanics.
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May 19, 2014 00:01
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Xand_Man posted:If you haven't read Last Call yet; do so. It's basically a fight for Godwalker status, and probably the most obvious Powers influence on UA's mechanics. Yeah, the first time I heard about UA, I thought it might have even been a collaboration/spinoff of Last Call. Broadly, I think Power and Stolze have a very similar approach to the modern fantasy/urban magic setting. Certainly in terms of mood and the damage that all the weird stuff does to the people around it.
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May 19, 2014 01:52
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Xand_Man posted:If you haven't read Last Call yet; do so. It's basically a fight for Godwalker status, and probably the most obvious Powers influence on UA's mechanics. Yeah the other two books in that series, Expiration Date and Earth Quake Weather, are all very UA. I think I actually started reading Powers after getting the UA book. Honestly I'm a fan of Stolze just for recommending me to who has become my favorite author.
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May 19, 2014 02:30
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Earthquake Weather is fun because it's after Expiration Date and Last Call and all the main characters clearly took levels in Occult-Aware Badass after the events of their own books.
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May 19, 2014 04:07
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For that matter, the Fault Lines trilogy as a whole can be seen as a transition across all three tiers. In Last Call, the protagonists start off almost completely unaware of magic and the occult except for Ozzie, who still doesn't know much. Street level. In Expiration Date, most of the protagonists have occult knowledge at the beginning but are still somewhat unaware of the players. Global level. Finally, in Earthquake Weather, everyone except the viewpoint character knows enough about the occult to be a player and the stakes are even higher. Cosmic level.
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May 24, 2014 15:33
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This came up in the June chat thread: Can anyone expound on the design strengths and weaknesses of Godlike and Wild Talents? Godlike and Reign always seemed kind of rock-papers-scissorsish based on who has what ability, but that never seemed out of place to me for either setting.
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Jun 13, 2014 18:43
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Godlike I am less familiar with but Wild Talents can be easily summed up: Strengths: With only a little bit of experience, it's very easy to make just about any power you could ever imagine Weaknesses: With only a little bit of experience, it's very easy to snap the game over your knee like a parapalegic Batman. Character point totals go out the window, game balance is lost in a whirlwind of nonsensically powerful uber abilities and any semblance of law and order is lost. The only way you can run Wild Talents for people experienced in the system, I feel, is to completely ignore point totals and have a frank discussion with your players about exactly what kind of game is being run and what powers are suitable for it. WT has the problem that cool, thematic powers that do interesting things and have drawbacks are almost inevitably more expensive than the ability to kill everyone on the planet. It also has the famous "here is a power to turn the Sun off permanently for 42 points per dice" sidebar, which means that anyone in a 200 point or more game can do it.
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Jun 19, 2014 16:48
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Doodmons posted:With only a little bit of experience, it's very easy to snap the game over your knee like a parapalegic Batman. Character point totals go out the window ... WT has the problem that cool, thematic powers that do interesting things and have drawbacks are almost inevitably more expensive than the ability to kill everyone on the planet. Yeah, I alluded to this in the chat thread, but my only attempt at running WT died on the vine during character creation largely for this reason. We were doing a Read or Die-inspired campaign, so everyone would have either a single or small suite of tightly themed powers, and it became immediately obvious that The Color ("I can instantly change the color and opacity of any substance", invisibility and blindness being just the most obvious tricks) was costing a lot more than the super-science gun-bunny (a supersoldier clone of Charles Darwin, codename The Perfect Specimen) whose devolver ray was just basically ten hard dice of a stun effect, which then got flawed down with things like being in a gun that needed to be reloaded. To be fair, I suspect this is less a problem specific to WT than just inherent in the idea of point-buy effects-based power creation, unless HERO has ways to avoid this I've never heard about. Oh hey, I actually have another ORE thing to post about! My regular group is going through an OSR phase, and while I am not at all interested in any relative of D20, I have been kind of idly curious about The Dungeon As Mythic Underworld and all that other stuff OSR blogs make sound cool that always seems to boil down to "that was weird, well, how many of us are still alive and how much is the treasure worth?" once it gets refracted through the D&D prism, and I've been wanting to try out Reign forever. I'm toying with a Reign setup where dungeon entrances occasionally burst forth from the earth like evil tumors, and the richest men hire the foolhardiest men to go in and bring back whatever strangeness they can sell, exploit, or reverse engineer. Kind of Stalker meets Ken Hite's concept of D&D as mining company. So in this setting the obvious Companies would be the merchant and/or adventurer guilds staking out dungeon claims. I was wondering if it'd make sense to handle The Megadungeon itself as a Company, to map its spread over the land and such. I can't quite decide if it'd be a better starting hook to have the PCs start as pro delvers (either running their own small startup or being part of one of the larger ones), or if I should have a dungeon open up near or inside some podunk village and the PCs are all locals with the town as their Company (bonus points for being able to replace dead PCs with friends and family). The one-roll character creation would hopefully be a decent method to quickly replace dead delvers, and the one-roll monsters from Nain would help me stock the dungeons. I could use a good random dungeon creator, but I do have the AD&D1 DMG around so there must be something in there. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 20:54
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What you have to remember about WT is that's not a game where you make tradional-style "superheroes" or people with one moderately strong power. It's basically about seeing what happens when there's no limit on what a person can do.
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Jun 19, 2014 21:10
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Evil Mastermind posted:What you have to remember about WT is that's not a game where you make tradional-style "superheroes" or people with one moderately strong power. It's basically about seeing what happens when there's no limit on what a person can do. ...not really? Wild Talents the setting and Progenitor go that way, but Grim War and Kerberos Club seem to disagree. eCollapse too. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 21:13
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I would just like to chime in and say that a Read or Die-style game sounds amazingly fun and is something I should look into running. Thanks for reminding me that show existed.
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Jun 19, 2014 21:14
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So, full Unknow Armies library up at http://bundleofholding.com/index/current for 20$. In case you haven't had the pleasure to read UA, this is great news. UA is incredible. You might never, ever play it, but you will certainly want to play it really bad. There's a website somewhere that lets you buy feelings. Last week they had a bundle sale and I got four feelings for just under 5$: regret, sadness, schadenfreude and 'a spoon of your favorite ice cream flavor'. I wish I hadn't, but I'd like you to try it and tell me your results. Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 10:26
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