Lemon Curdistan posted:That's because you're literally looking at classes designed as variants of the core book classes with only a few moves changed. Yeah, but those changes aren't significant. They still have a broad mix of straight mechanical boosts, story-focused boosts, and a few things you can roll for beyond the basic moves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 16:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 00:12 |
|
|
Mr. Maltose posted:The problem with that is the same problem as a 'sci-fi' PbtA hack. Fantasy is such a soft and vague genre that you have to zero in a lot to get into territory firm enough to build a good fictional set from. Monster Of The Week more than Dungeon World shows a problem with that, because a game that lets you be Scooby-Doo or Supernatural is covering too much ground and diluting what makes those hacks good. Speaking as someone who tends to run really bizarre combinations of genres Dungeon World probably is the closest you can get to a generic fantasy game without pigeonholing yourself into something that will break. The only major problem is with the playbooks but there are enough good ones that it really doesn't become an issue.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 16:54
|
|
|
Going to Origins next weekend and I plan to spend a lot of time in the Games on Demand room. I haven't played most of the stuff listed as being available (http://www.indiegamesexplosion.org/2014/05/26/origins-is-almost-here/) only Burning Wheel, DitV and Night's Black Agents. From what I'm seeing here it would be better to try Apocalypse World than DW. I want to try out a bunch of stuff to see what I want to bring back to my local group. How are Iron Edda, Montsegur and Night Witches? Any other "must play" games on the list?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 17:29
|
|
head58 posted:Going to Origins next weekend and I plan to spend a lot of time in the Games on Demand room. I haven't played most of the stuff listed as being available (http://www.indiegamesexplosion.org/2014/05/26/origins-is-almost-here/) only Burning Wheel, DitV and Night's Black Agents. Montsegur is emotionally intense to a very high level. Fiasco is a must-play game. Feng Shui 2nd, Fate Core/DFRPG/ARRPG, Ars Magica, Gamma World, and Edge of the Empire are all more or less conventional games which have fairly interesting approaches. Golden Sky Stories is worth trying out, as is Nobilis. Mouse Guard is a tighter Burning Wheel. Monsterhearts is also good if you want high drama and emotional intensity. Cthulhu Dark and Trail of Cthulhu both have interesting approaches to investigation/mystery gameplay.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Yeah, but those changes aren't significant. Yes, it's why they're variant classes and not entirely new playbooks. You're going to have some trouble finding playbooks that don't do this, though: Effectronica posted:They still have a broad mix of straight mechanical boosts, story-focused boosts, and a few things you can roll for beyond the basic moves. Seeing as that's what PbtA moves are.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 17:53
|
|
Lemon Curdistan posted:Yes, it's why they're variant classes and not entirely new playbooks. You're going to have some trouble finding playbooks that don't do this, though: Okay, people were suggesting that the alternates were significantly different from the core ones in terms of having fewer straight mechanical boosts and more narrative-based ones, but I don't see any major differences on that front, which is where my confusion comes from.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:Okay, people were suggesting that the alternates were significantly different from the core ones in terms of having fewer straight mechanical boosts and more narrative-based ones, but I don't see any major differences on that front, which is where my confusion comes from. Well, for an example, let's look at the core Fighter. Only one of its starting moves gives it something to do - break things - while its other starting moves are "you have a sword" and "you can wear heavy armor." It has 4 advanced moves who do nothing but "You roll +damage," 2 moves that give +armor constantly, one move that's just "+1 to discern realities during combat," and a move that is "ask the GM how much damage that enemy rolls," which is really boring. Things are this are mostly what people talk about as an issue with the DW core. The various revisions aren't trying to replace the core Fighter archetype, just fix all those questionable moves and replace them with less boring ones. The Warrior, comparatively, has 3 different starting moves that let it actively do something - it can block attacks completely at the cost of losing armor, it can directly confront a worthy foe and keep them off everyone else's back, and it can still break things and have a cool signature weapon. The +armor moves now also give a narrative effect. There are only 2 +damage moves now, so so much space isn't wasted on the same thing. And there's just generally move moves that are "you can do another thing now." It's still intended to fill the same fictional niche. It isn't trying to change that. What it is trying to change is all the poor design decisions in the core playbook and make one that's less boring. There are plenty of differences between the two, and fairly significant ones at that. Just because you don't care about the differences that are there doesn't take them away.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 18:28
|
|
|
For classes that aren't variants of the core classes and therefore have less boring statistical moves, look at the Inverse World classes, or gnome's various Mage classes, or my Assassin or Shaman.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 18:51
|
|
|
Play By Post is weird for me because I really like the idea but it can be a big hassle to get things working well in the format. I'd like to run PBP games, but some combination of me constantly saying 'no that would be a terrible idea' and my first time trying that being a giant disaster on my part makes me keep avoiding actually trying to run another game. It's probably mostly the part where I ran a real terrible game that's stopping me though, and considering I realize a bunch of stuff I did wrong I should probably just shut up and try to run something again.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
Aside from #acolyte and #boardgame, what other IRC channels are there for trad gamers?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:13
|
|
|
sentrygun posted:Play By Post is weird for me because I really like the idea but it can be a big hassle to get things working well in the format. I'd like to run PBP games, but some combination of me constantly saying 'no that would be a terrible idea' and my first time trying that being a giant disaster on my part makes me keep avoiding actually trying to run another game. It's probably mostly the part where I ran a real terrible game that's stopping me though, and considering I realize a bunch of stuff I did wrong I should probably just shut up and try to run something again. If at first you don't succeed try and try again, it's what I do. SquadronROE posted:Aside from #acolyte and #boardgame, what other IRC channels are there for trad gamers? Off the top of my head, #badwrongfun, #redhandofdoom, #persona, #tinypewtermen and #sweote.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:15
|
|
|
SquadronROE posted:Aside from #acolyte and #boardgame, what other IRC channels are there for trad gamers? #letsbeheroes
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:21
|
|
|
Hm, it appears that Tales of Power for Ars Magica is available in PDF now. That's nice.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:33
|
|
|
Forums Terrorist posted:Off the top of my head, #badwrongfun, #redhandofdoom, #persona, #tinypewtermen and #sweote. There's also #shadowrun which is fairly self-explanatory.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:39
|
|
|
sentrygun posted:Play By Post is weird for me because I really like the idea but it can be a big hassle to get things working well in the format. I'd like to run PBP games, but some combination of me constantly saying 'no that would be a terrible idea' and my first time trying that being a giant disaster on my part makes me keep avoiding actually trying to run another game. It's probably mostly the part where I ran a real terrible game that's stopping me though, and considering I realize a bunch of stuff I did wrong I should probably just shut up and try to run something again. What's the worst that could happen? I've never played or ran a PBP until recently and I gave it a shot and I'm really enjoying running my game. It's great because where I live there are no good gaming groups and my time constraints mean I can't sit down for hours at a time uninterrupted in a skype or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:46
|
|
|
XyloJW posted:What's the worst that could happen? I've never played or ran a PBP until recently and I gave it a shot and I'm really enjoying running my game. It's great because where I live there are no good gaming groups and my time constraints mean I can't sit down for hours at a time uninterrupted in a skype or whatever. At this point it's starting to just boil down to thinking of something good to run a ridiculous extreme sports thing in that wouldn't get too bogged down in mechanics or something.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 23:13
|
|
|
When in doubt, run something Apocalypse World inspired. If none of the available games or hacks appeal to you, you can get a long way with building something basic in the 2d6 vein(use Simple World to make it more straightforward). I think at least one person is running one of those for a dragon-y game.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 23:53
|
|
|
Oh mechanics are another advantage to PBP. I don't have to do very much planning or research or whatever at all, because if something unexpected comes up, I have all the time in the world to crack open a book and look up a mechanic or think of a name or draw a map or whatever. If I was running it in person, I might need to have a firm grasp of how grappling rules work or some other minor tricky mechanic, because I couldn't just tell everyone to hang on while I read a guide for 15 minutes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 23:56
|
|
|
XyloJW posted:Oh mechanics are another advantage to PBP. I don't have to do very much planning or research or whatever at all, because if something unexpected comes up, I have all the time in the world to crack open a book and look up a mechanic or think of a name or draw a map or whatever. If I was running it in person, I might need to have a firm grasp of how grappling rules work or some other minor tricky mechanic, because I couldn't just tell everyone to hang on while I read a guide for 15 minutes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 01:47
|
|
|
sentrygun posted:At this point it's starting to just boil down to thinking of something good to run a ridiculous extreme sports thing in that wouldn't get too bogged down in mechanics or something. There's only one answer. X CRAWL. That might not solve the mechanics problem at all (it doesn't), but it's still the greatest eXtreMe sport.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:16
|
|
|
You guys might change your tunes on PbP when I get off my rear end (and stop being distracted by lovely mobile games and ... well ... my children) to run a Powers & Perils game.
dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jun 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:22
|
|
|
I have been working on a Fate hack I intend to use to run PbP games, since most other games are just disappointing to me (including vanilla Fate at this point), but I have been distracted by all these bestselling novellas I'm writing 
Fuego Fish fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jun 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:26
|
|
|
On the subject of characters i just realized that I've used two Gnome7 playbooks in two different long running campaigns by MadScientistWorking ( The Improved Fighter, and the Drider ). Our current group is eccentric in that the straight man of the group is a mischievous pixie disguised as a human ( something brought up by said player tonight ). Also everything in the past several sessions has been solved by shoving something into what is essentially a bag of holding. So here's an idea: What are the Dumbest/Greatest solutions to problems you've had characters come up with?
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 03:45
|
|
|
sentrygun posted:Play By Post is weird for me because I really like the idea but it can be a big hassle to get things working well in the format. I'd like to run PBP games, but some combination of me constantly saying 'no that would be a terrible idea' and my first time trying that being a giant disaster on my part makes me keep avoiding actually trying to run another game. It's probably mostly the part where I ran a real terrible game that's stopping me though, and considering I realize a bunch of stuff I did wrong I should probably just shut up and try to run something again. yeah just do it PBP is great, don't worry about it!!
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 04:19
|
|
|
Captain Foo posted:yeah just do it PBP is great, don't worry about it!! this!! Speaking of, I just started a new channel on SynIRC.net - #gameadvice, a mostly on-topic channel for talking about running and playing in all sorts of RPGs, since IRC can suit conversations better sometimes than the GM Advice thread, for example. (And because a lot of the existing Trad Games IRC channels are very imposing and anything but.) Come and join and ask questions and poo poo!
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 04:34
|
|
|
Forums Terrorist posted:If at first you don't succeed try and try again, it's what I do. So, redhandofdoom is obviously about roleplaying IC as orcs, but what are the rest of those channels about?
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 05:36
|
|
|
Cats, anime, ???, wookiie boobs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 05:45
|
|
|
#persona is your one stop shop for all things FATE, anime, and bishie. #tinypewtermen I'm guessing is about miniatures wargaming, and #sweote would be "Star Wars Edge of the Empire".
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 05:49
|
|
|
I was unaware that Wookies were the Star Wars equivalent of Dragonborn.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 06:01
|
|
Talkc posted:On the subject of characters i just realized that I've used two Gnome7 playbooks in two different long running campaigns by MadScientistWorking ( The Improved Fighter, and the Drider ). Dumped a MacGuffin that activated a doomsday device into the Negative Energy Plane, where everything is quickly destroyed by entropy, instead of going into a dangerous dungeon to get another MacGuffin to disable the first one.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 06:08
|
|
|
Talkc posted:What are the Dumbest/Greatest solutions to problems you've had characters come up with? My Dungeon World campaign I'm GM'ing has a Bard player who does ridiculous poo poo and it's amazing. At some point the dungeon was filling up with gas that gives you illusions. The entire team rolled Defy Danger +DEX to race towards the end of the hall and get out of there, but since he had a low Dexterity, he decided to just casually hold his breath for minutes while strolling over there. He nailed the constitution roll and did just that. He decided to get a friend out of a tough spot by karate kicking him in the face. He failed the roll miserably and his ally was kicked INTO a spear rather than away from enemies. He tried to placate zombies by playing soothing music. And the entire team, sans the bard, went straight up evil at some point while traveling. They needed an orc shaman to guide them across the steppes, and infuriated him by explicitly hunting game when that was his only condition to help them: don't kill poo poo. He told them to gently caress off, so they killed him, resurrected a dead owlbear and bound the shaman's spirit to that, because that way they could give orders to the owlbear husk. They made their very own necromancer GPS.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 08:28
|
|
|
Talkc posted:What are the Dumbest/Greatest solutions to problems you've had characters come up with? It's not exactly a solution to a problem, but many years ago I ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and upon coming across a rather nice swimming pool room with frescoes and such the party decided it would look better in their base - so they used stone shape spells to carve it free of the dungeon and towed it away on rollers.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 12:31
|
|
|
potatocubed posted:It's not exactly a solution to a problem, but many years ago I ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and upon coming across a rather nice swimming pool room with frescoes and such the party decided it would look better in their base - so they used stone shape spells to carve it free of the dungeon and towed it away on rollers. that's pretty cool, cool players you got there
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 15:22
|
|
|
Does anyone play Paranoia anymore? I loved it as a kid and it seems like a good fit for short, light-hearted PbP games.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 15:26
|
|
|
bunnielab posted:Does anyone play Paranoia anymore? I loved it as a kid and it seems like a good fit for short, light-hearted PbP games. We can't run Paranoia here because forum use obviously requires Blue clearance. We're better off than RPGNet, but not by much.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 15:37
|
|
|
some loving LIAR posted:We can't run Paranoia here because forum use obviously requires Blue clearance. We're better off than RPGNet, but not by much. You can run it in FYAD though, that only requires Red.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 15:40
|
|
|
Forums Terrorist posted:You can run it in FYAD though, that only requires Red. Red FYAD? Sounds like someone might be a commie. Have you stopped being a traitor today?
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 16:41
|
|
|
Talkc posted:So here's an idea: Back in 2nd edition, the castle building guide gave you lists of prices for contractors and builders and such. We had just found a dangerous dungeon with a lot of loot that was teeming with dangerous creatures and fire traps. So we went to the nearest town, bought a couple potions of water breathing, and hired a team of laborers to reroute the nearest river into the dungeon entrance.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 16:44
|
|
|
Talkc posted:What are the Dumbest/Greatest solutions to problems you've had characters come up with? When I first got all my friends in college to play D&D for the first time, it was 3.5 and they were brand new to gaming so I helped them generate decently optimized characters. That way I could be confident they could out brute force anything I threw at them, and they would basically only need to be as deep in the rules as they wanted to be. But because they were brand new to games they always ended up completely owning the fights by using teamwork and problem solving the likes of which I haven't really seen since. On the first day, there was a hydra charging a dungeon crasher (pushes people into walls to do extra damage) fighter, a geometer wizard and hummingbird familiar who vowed never ever to deal damage, an ice blasting necromancer sorceress, and a literal pokemon trainer druidess with a wartortle for an animal companion. In the beginning I roll hot so the every head getting to attack on a charge and on opportunity attacks is really beating them up. The sorc and druid are getting sad that the fast healing is going to undo their ice and lightning damage and everyone's talking about running away and fighting it later. The geometer's turn comes up and he, the only one who has taken no damage so far, casts Mindless Rage, a spell no one knew he had picked. Then he starts trying to run away from the hydra which is going to ignore everyone else to try to kill him. It's a marsh, so he's not going to succeed. The druid's turn comes up, she orders the wartortle to put him on his back and surf away through trees and stuff so the hydra can't charge them. It bulldozes through the trees but can't catch up to them for now. While Mindless rage's duration starts to run out, my players all start asking one another how their spells and moves work and decide as a team to try to one shot the hydra and run away if it fails. The dungeoncrasher and the geometer wonder if pushing something into the ground counts as pushing something into a wall. I say if you can get above it, sure, it's this tall. The geometer says he can make his bird familiar fly above the hydra then switch the fighter with the bird, dropping him on top of it. But he'll have to stop riding the wartortle or he might flub the concentration check to cast while riding. If it fails they probably both die. The sorceress says eff that, wait for me to cast an ice admixtured nuke on the water around it, to freeze it in place, she has a crush on the geometer and wants him to be safe. Aww. The fighter then realizes that he should probably eat an opp attack for dropping down on top of the thing since Mindless Rage will wear off. If I roll decently hot again, he'll die. Someone looks at Benign Transposition and notices that the fighter can take along up to his maximum load, which is really high. They decide on a huge rear end boulder that someone rolls some obscenely high survival, nature, spot or something check to "find." Turns out you can't do an opp attack on something with cover against you, like a huge rear end boulder. Also they figure out how much damage a huge rear end boulder falling on you does. They all delay and ready actions for this glorious Chrono trigger Quadra Tech. Sorc freezes the Hydra in the water. Fighter dives underwater and does a headstand on a huge rear end boulder. Wizard dismounts wartortle and switches the Fighter with his bird as it flies over the immobilized hydra. Druid electrifies the huge rear end boulder with call lightning. The electric boulder smashes the hydra then the fighter tests his might on it and crushes it some more. Shards of ice bounce out of the double impact crater, slicing off half the heads, and the wartortle spins up and pounce charges the thing and decapitates all the rest. And forever after they always tried to one-round entire encounters as a team. It was the best.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 18:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 00:12 |
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Yeah, I've never understood why, for example, people scoff at RPGnet all the time for getting infatuated with new "RPGnet darlings" or the like but what do you expect when you get a bunch of elfgame nerds in a shared space and a shiny new game comes out? Like you said, people getting hyped over stuff is a cool thing, and the DW hype has led to a whole bunch of homebrew playbooks and settings and other rad stuff so I dunno man, bring on the flavor of the month. Kai Tave posted:I noticed a tendency on RPGnet for this sort of thing to happen, where over time the pitches for various games became more and more exaggerated to the point of self-parody. It happened with Exalted and I know it also happened with Warhammer Fantasy where for a while if someone asked "hey so what's WFRP like?" the answer you'd get back was along the lines of "oh man it's so great you roll up a character and IMMEDIATELY DIE IN SQUALOR AND DISEASE gently caress YEAH." Adherents are the worst advertisement for every religion, y'know? Case in point, the whole discussion about what happens in FATE when something catches on fire, that made it sound like a bean-counting nightmare. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jun 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 18:26
|
|