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Davin Valkri posted:To change the topic, hey, anybody here often hit the same beats with the characters they make for these games? I'm full of bishies, doy, but Battlemaster likes aristocratic-y and slightly arrogant women, Plutonis seems to like petite, angry chibi-types, and Comrade Gorbash's characters are apparently "Almond from Cucumber Quest". Anybody else want to confess? I just love pet classes.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:24
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Evil Mastermind posted:Oh good, my Dungeon World GM wants to switch our game to Strands of Fate. Sucky to less sucky but anyway.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:26
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Davin Valkri posted:To change the topic, hey, anybody here often hit the same beats with the characters they make for these games? I'm full of bishies, doy, but Battlemaster likes aristocratic-y and slightly arrogant women, Plutonis seems to like petite, angry chibi-types, and Comrade Gorbash's characters are apparently "Almond from Cucumber Quest". Anybody else want to confess? I don't play enough games to know if I have a preference or not, I usually just run them.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:27
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Effectronica posted:I usually play a comic buffoon, but in real life games. I don't PbP. You are not one of our regulars, so welcome aboard! What do you usually play?
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Jun 8, 2014 03:33
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Winson_Paine posted:You are not one of our regulars, so welcome aboard! What do you usually play? Right now I'm in a D&D 4e game and... nothing else. Hoping to start running/playing stuff more once I stop having to zip around two counties on a daily basis.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:35
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I tend to make characters that will cause interesting character conflicts with other characters. This is also why I tend to app late.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:35
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I play pretty much anything but I like roguish types and tend to play controllers in 4e 
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Jun 8, 2014 03:37
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I used to be all about the rogues when I started playing, but these days I often find myself accidentally drawn to religious characters.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:38
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Effectronica posted:Right now I'm in a D&D 4e game and... nothing else. Hoping to start running/playing stuff more once I stop having to zip around two counties on a daily basis. Consider PBP, we need more of those. 4e is super popular here still, too. It is UNCANNY
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Jun 8, 2014 03:39
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Is there really a lack of PbP going on? It seems like game threads are going up at least daily.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:41
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Winson_Paine posted:Consider PBP, we need more of those. 4e is super popular here still, too. It is UNCANNY I've had some bad PBP experiences, but then again, I was mostly involved with running them.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:41
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Mr. Maltose posted:Is there really a lack of PbP going on? It seems like game threads are going up at least daily. I like to beat the drum for new PBP in general, while all my TG fellows are beloved in their gaming, PBP is what brought me here in the first place and you never forget your first. Effectronica posted:I've had some bad PBP experiences, but then again, I was mostly involved with running them. Yeah, the maptastic nature of 4e makes it kind of a pain from what I have heard.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:44
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Winson_Paine posted:I like to beat the drum for new PBP in general, while all my TG fellows are beloved in their gaming, PBP is what brought me here in the first place and you never forget your first. These were call of cthulhu and microscope, lol!
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Jun 8, 2014 03:48
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Sucky to less sucky but anyway. I keep hearing this around the place. What's sucky about DW?
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Jun 8, 2014 03:48
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Davin Valkri posted:To change the topic, hey, anybody here often hit the same beats with the characters they make for these games? I'm full of bishies, doy, but Battlemaster likes aristocratic-y and slightly arrogant women, Plutonis seems to like petite, angry chibi-types, and Comrade Gorbash's characters are apparently "Almond from Cucumber Quest". Anybody else want to confess? I tend to make witty scoundrels, crazy geniuses or super dark and tormented killers - knights in a fantasy setting, mercenaries otherwise. I don't know how to say that in anime.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:50
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It feels like PBP variety has really diversified over the last year or two. Back in the heyday of 4e there would be like 10 games running and 20+ apps per game. I used to run mostly 4e too, but the last few games I've run have been DW, nWoD mage, nWod God machine, and now Next. Next has actually been serviceable to run PBPs in since there's less stuff to track. I ran a game of it about a year ago too, it both kept player attention for the duration, and actually completed. Mind boggling. I want to see a PBP of Urban Shadows, the apocalpyse world WOD-ish kickstarter. All the stuff is available now to backers, I'm sure some goons are in on it.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:50
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I don't have a particular aversion to casters or "support" type characters but most of the characters I play tend to be very direct and physically oriented, whether that means a 4E Monk or a cybered-up thief or a straight-up "hit things with an axe" fighter. I also tend to play characters with brash personalities painted in broad strokes...something I realized early on when I started roleplaying is that most RPGs aren't really nuanced and subtle works of high art and they have a tendency to end abruptly, so if you want a character that stands out in a memorable fashion it's better to go big right from the start and then backsolve for finer detail if the game progresses along. The few times I've tried playing silent and/or brooding types it's been really boring.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:51
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Roughly 40 percent of my characters are utterly appalled at what the players are doing. Once he becomes numb to the wanton destruction parties cause, he usually pleads with enemies to go away, and not join the hundreds the group has slain n whatever scheme. The pathfinder society version of this guy would often explain to potential enemies that, if these particular pathfinders were sent, it's probably because somebody didn't want to have to bother with prisoners or a trial. I also gravitate towards trying to make absurd or at least odd combinations played straight. Halfling fighter, half orc wizard, minotaur rogue. Finally, characters that 'miss the point' or the token mortal. Rifts was my favorite for this. A nightbane, a superhero, a dragon, and an Atlantan spell casting thing? What we need is a traveling academic with no psionics.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:52
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Bigup DJ posted:I keep hearing this around the place. What's sucky about DW? In my opinion, as a game snob, Dungeon World is an interesting concept, but the intentions are entirely at odds with the mechanical base. Apocalypse World's engine is built around emulating fiction, while D&D has evolved into something very distinct from fantasy novels or movies. So they're working at odds. You can see this most clearly in the big difference between combat in AW and combat in DW.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:52
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Kai Tave posted:I don't have a particular aversion to casters or "support" type characters but most of the characters I play tend to be very direct and physically oriented, whether that means a 4E Monk or a cybered-up thief or a straight-up "hit things with an axe" fighter. I also tend to play characters with brash personalities painted in broad strokes...something I realized early on when I started roleplaying is that most RPGs aren't really nuanced and subtle works of high art and they have a tendency to end abruptly, so if you want a character that stands out in a memorable fashion it's better to go big right from the start and then backsolve for finer detail if the game progresses along. The few times I've tried playing silent and/or brooding types it's been really boring. Brooding types might be fun if you had a) the right environment and b) you played it for comedy and had a selection of Bauhaus lyrics you used as default responses to everything or something.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:53
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Winson_Paine posted:Yeah, the maptastic nature of 4e makes it kind of a pain from what I have heard. I've mentioned this before a couple times but honestly the best way I've seen to run 4E in a PbP is instead of the GM making maps and then updating them constantly and the players having to run through a big list of "please move me here and here and then over here" is for the GM to make a map and tokens on a Google docs page and give out a link when combat starts. If the players then have at least basic information on enemy defenses and HP then they can move their own guys, make their own rolls, and track whether enemies are dead or injured for how much or whatever, and it makes things run a lot smoother. In my opinion etc.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:55
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Bigup DJ posted:I keep hearing this around the place. What's sucky about DW? It depends on who you ask. Humbug Schoolbus doesn't like it because it lacks crunch, if I recall correctly. DW doesn't suck, but oh man was TG infatuated with it for a while as the be all end all.
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Jun 8, 2014 03:55
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It's relatively good actually, considering it compromises the *world framework as much as it does I'd call it "serviceable", you can play a fun game with it but it suffers for the D&Disms the creators couldn't part with
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Jun 8, 2014 04:00
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I pretty much used to play exclusively obnoxiously overwrought smashing-types or necromancers, but as time goes by I find myself more and more attracted to just playing whatever the GM thinks is missing in the player base or as the generally-agreed-upon least interesting/powerful type of character to see if I can make it work anyway.TheLovablePlutonis posted:Tried, didn't work. Oh, I tried connecting to irc.synirc.net instead and that did work. I guess I could delete this quote. Nah
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Jun 8, 2014 04:02
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Mr. Maltose posted:It depends on who you ask. Humbug Schoolbus doesn't like it because it lacks crunch, if I recall correctly. There is still a lot of love for DW here, really. It has worn down from when the bloom was on the rose, but there is a lot of love for it here. I think the guys who wrote it are around here somewhere, if I am remembering right.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:03
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The *world games flow a hell of a lot better than D&Ds in PBP, that's for sure. Initiative means waiting for a player to post, whereas the 'camera' can focus on whoever is active and posting at the time in DW.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:03
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DW goes from an okay game to a great one when you look at all the fan works that twist or excise the residual bad cruft from the original product. The Playbook system lets you circumvent a number of missteps.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:04
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Mr. Maltose posted:DW goes from an okay game to a great one when you look at all the fan works that twist or excise the residual bad cruft from the original product. The Playbook system lets you circumvent a number of missteps. I would like to see playbooks that actually do this, because there are a whole lot of them.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:05
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Pretty much every book from the Dungeon World thread is an improvement from the original playbooks, but a specific example is Fenarisk's revised core books which stripped out all the boring +1 moves with things with more narrative instead of mechanical heft. This is pretty much the big list of SA approved cool playbooks for cool people, sorted by what cool things they do. Mr. Maltose fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jun 8, 2014 |
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Jun 8, 2014 04:09
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Bigup DJ posted:I keep hearing this around the place. What's sucky about DW? Well, I can only tell you why I don't like DW so take it for what it is worth. Plenty of people love it lots, and will give your reasons why. I have sort of examined my own thoughts on this, and basically it is not rulesy enough for me for it to be interesting as a rulesy sort of game and too gunked up with junk to be a smooth sort of storygame. Like if I wanted to deal with D&Dish stuff I can play Pathfinder and get a fix for that sort of thing, and if I want something freer wheeling I have PDQ and Hillfolk and all kinds of stuff, I guess. I tried running it, tried playing it, and would probably try playing again if the game was right, but I guess it just didn't do much for me.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:10
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Mr. Maltose posted:DW goes from an okay game to a great one when you look at all the fan works that twist or excise the residual bad cruft from the original product. The Playbook system lets you circumvent a number of missteps. Ok cool, I was worried there was some kind of terrible sickness at the core of DW's mechanics which was loving it up. The only thing that sticks out at me is ability scores and the weight system, and I'd like to get rid of XP and turn Drives into Keys (Basically harder to fulfil Drives which level you up instead of getting you XP).
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Jun 8, 2014 04:15
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Mr. Maltose posted:Pretty much every book from the Dungeon World thread is an improvement from the original playbooks, but a specific example is Fenarisk's revised core books which stripped out all the boring +1 moves with things with more narrative instead of mechanical heft. I'm not seeing a huge difference here between the Skald and Bard, or between the Fighter and Warrior. Bigup DJ posted:Ok cool, I was worried there was some kind of terrible sickness at the core of DW's mechanics which was loving it up. The only thing that sticks out at me is ability scores and the weight system, and I'd like to get rid of XP and turn Drives into Keys (Basically harder to fulfil Drives which level you up instead of getting you XP). There is a sickness in the mechanics, but it's not one that will bug you for casual games.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:18
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DW's problem is essentially that it's trying to be D&D. And since it was designed that way from the start, the problem is pretty fundamental. You know how D&D style fantasy sort of just isn't a story thing? People sometimes call it its own "genre", but it's more accurate to say that D&D is sort of the game where you imagine all sorts of cool fiction happening and then you play the game and it doesn't happen. DW is very, very good at being the D&D you remember playing when you were twelve. The problem is that it's trying, actively, to be D&D, the game where the cool fiction doesn't happen as much in actual play as advertised, instead of being the game you imagined D&D to be before playing it. It sort of bogs itself down in mechanical trifles and boring +1 to a thing rules. Where it shines are all the areas where it breaks that format. So most of the playbooks people have written for it have moved towards breaking the +1 format, towards exploring how triggers shape play and what it means for a game designer to be able to write a power that says "you can smell the fear of your enemies" and have that also be the rule that literally lets your character smell the fear of their enemies at the same time. And it's really started to take off. It'd be crass of me to start pointing to products though since I'm involved in a ton of them.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:18
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ritorix posted:The *world games flow a hell of a lot better than D&Ds in PBP, that's for sure. Initiative means waiting for a player to post, whereas the 'camera' can focus on whoever is active and posting at the time in DW. Yeah, this seems to be a huge strength of PbtA games in PbP. It'd be awesome to see more games take this approach, or games hacked to work this way. Speaking of, I think L5R would be amazing for a crunchy sort of PbtA hack.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:20
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Effectronica posted:I'm not seeing a huge difference here between the Skald and Bard, or between the Fighter and Warrior. If your problem is how it's way too close to its D&D base, I could give you a suggestion for fixing that. Here's some previews of the playbooks to go look at.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:23
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Oh my god this IRC channel is amazing My eyes are open
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Jun 8, 2014 04:24
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gnome7 posted:If your problem is how it's way too close to its D&D base, I could give you a suggestion for fixing that. Here's some previews of the playbooks to go look at. Nah, my problem is that the PbtA mechanics used in Volley, Defy Danger, Hack and Slash, etc. are inappropriate for something as zoomed in on combat as Dungeon World by default is.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:25
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Mr. Maltose posted:DW doesn't suck, but oh man was TG infatuated with it for a while as the be all end all. TG is the poster child for 'flavor of the month'.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:29
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Davin Valkri posted:To change the topic, hey, anybody here often hit the same beats with the characters they make for these games? I'm full of bishies, doy, but Battlemaster likes aristocratic-y and slightly arrogant women, Plutonis seems to like petite, angry chibi-types, and Comrade Gorbash's characters are apparently "Almond from Cucumber Quest". Anybody else want to confess? I've noticed I have a habit of making world weary mercenary types in almost every game, they're usually all different kinds of classes or whatever, but that's the basic core of each character's personality. It's weird I never really noticed or thought about it until now.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:29
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Effectronica posted:Nah, my problem is that the PbtA mechanics used in Volley, Defy Danger, Hack and Slash, etc. are inappropriate for something as zoomed in on combat as Dungeon World by default is. I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean the moves need to be zoomed in more, made more specific for the nitty gritty DW wants, or that dungeon world needs to focus less specifically on the specifics of combat? Because from where I'm sitting the moves look pretty good for covering a play-by-play through a combat. If you mean you don't want to go play-by-play through a battle in a *World game, then yeah, I can see where your issue with DW is, but I think it's a lot of fun.
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Jun 8, 2014 04:30
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