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Really Pants posted:Should magic teacups be more lethal than mundane teacups? gently caress your magical tea party bullshit.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 16:53 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 09:25 |
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Benagain posted:My GF and I are going to be taking a train to New Orleans, and we were thinking of things to do to kill 20 hours besides sleep, drink and play Netrunner. The idea of me running a game for her came up and I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for a one PC game or things that they've done in the past to make it easier? Any systems that lend themselves to it? GMless systems may be in order. Microscope and Fiasco immediately come to mind.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:06 |
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Benagain posted:My GF and I are going to be taking a train to New Orleans, and we were thinking of things to do to kill 20 hours besides sleep, drink and play Netrunner. The idea of me running a game for her came up and I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for a one PC game or things that they've done in the past to make it easier? Any systems that lend themselves to it? Black Streams Solo Heroes is a set of rules to allow you to run a D&D(-like) game with just a GM and one player, while Scarlet Heroes is a campaign designed around the system.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:21 |
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Swags posted:So I have a "which system should I use?" question. I hope everyone doesn't toss out the *Worlds because I don't particularly care for those. We actually have a what system should I use megathread, but as a few suggestions:
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:25 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:If you watched a scene where Vin Diesel kills a dude with a teacup/mug and went "Yes, the fact that he's ignoring the penalty to using an improvised weapon shows how strong he is, though it is a shame he is not using the weapon with which he has all his bonuses" then it amazes me you're able to even type coherent sentences on the keyboard. Actually, literally, your argument is that you're dumb as all hell and smell like poop. Like, no, I'm sorry, what? "Is sweet" is not the sum total of things to say about an action hero. Riddick is more dangerous with a gun than a teacup. If Riddick comes at you with a gun, rather than a teacup, it's because he takes you seriously. Any game in which fighting with weapons are important should have rules about weapons that distinguish between the functionality of different weapons. Vampires don't need to drink blood to survive. Vampires are just that awesome. The Power of Tulips is just as good at summoning and animating tulips as they are at summoning and animating keyboards, because they're that. motherbitching. epic. You've descended completely into self-parody. Tone has wholly eclipsed content. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:26 |
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We were just about to move beyond this stupid teacup arguement.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:31 |
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I'm literally watching multiple posters defend John Wick. Action heroes often arm themselves with weapons as their situation demands and context allows. Well, Mr. Carter had to do something like that. He had his scientists dissolve the whole of reality into a uniform grey mush, which
Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Oct 5, 2014 |
# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:32 |
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Maybe the ideal system is that which incentivizes killing people with teacups sometimes. I'm pretty sure Riddick got a fate point for that scene, is what I'm saying.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:34 |
Gazetteer posted:You probably wouldn't make "Emperor of Rome and King of Germania and Gaul" and "King of Logres or High King of Britain" separate Aspects -- those are highly redundant. Either you'd wrap them up into one Aspect ("The High King" or whatever), or if the first one doesn't matter as much as you're saying, just don't make it an Aspect. Aspects are not an exhaustive list of things that describe a character, they are the things that matter narratively. Same with the magic spear and dagger. If they're not important, don't make an aspect out of them. You also should just never have two guys with the same aspect, ideally. Jesus. What you're doing here is taking the thing which I said- "spending Fate points on something shows its importance to the narrative" and rephrasing it slightly, then pretending it's a counter to what I said. Like, why do you think Balsera, Donoghue and Hicks tell you not to do these things? They explicitly said in at least one first-party Fate product that I can remember that you should only pick important things to be Aspects and ditch ones you're not using, so that you aren't just picking one or two things at a time. This is also why you have the progression from 10 Aspects in SOTC to 7 in DFRPG to 5 in Core. Ferrinus posted:I'm literally watching multiple posters defend John Wick. Action heroes often arm themselves with weapons as their situation demands and context allows. Well, Mr. Carter had to do something like that. He had his scientists dissolve the whole of reality into a uniform grey mush, which LOL.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:39 |
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ummmmmmmmmmmmm excuse me like i don't know about you turbonerds but my ideal system is one that incentivises killing people (and etc.) with teacups all the time actually can this just be tea party chat now because tea parties are pretty fuckin baller
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:49 |
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Only if they involve tea without sugar or milk. Anyone who uses those is dead to me.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:50 |
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Is there a game for emulating backstabbing high society folks at a tea party? That'd be my ideal. edit: Social/verbal backstabs, not the Rogue kind
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:52 |
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WELL THEN I GUESS I BETTER DIG A HOLE IN THE FRONT YARD AND CLIMB IN BECAUSE I GUESS I'M DEAD TO YOU god what a jerk (just kidding, i've never actually had milk or cream in tea ;o; like sometimes I drink it with honey, but mostly I just drink it plain! I can't stand coffee without milk, though. )
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:55 |
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That is because coffee is an abomination. Tea is love. Tea is life.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 17:58 |
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FewtureMD posted:Is there a game for emulating backstabbing high society folks at a tea party? That'd be my ideal. A less murdery game of Fiasco? Regency Ladies-themed One Last Job? (ugh i know there are other, better-suited games but i'm still kind of waking up bluh
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 18:00 |
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Somebody was making a PbtA hack of PG Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster stuff. What happened to that?
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 18:10 |
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inklesspen posted:We actually have a what system should I use megathread, but as a few suggestions: You know, I thought we had a thread like that, and I couldn't find it. I think I was searching the Game Room and not the main TG board. Thanks though.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 18:34 |
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Sorry to pop into this as it's dying down, but there are some concepts people aren't really bringing up that I figure are useful additions to the conversation.Ratoslov posted:Hell, why shouldn't it be modeled as a bonus? It's a cool scene idea, and you should get some bennies for trying to do something cool. You could just kill the mooks workmanlike, but no, you decided to do it in a neat way, and that deserves applause. Wasn't the whole point of the scene that Riddick took a penalty to gain a bonus? The whole point of the teacup thing was to completely break the morale of the group he was fighting against. Like, there are two ways to look at the scene--as a player controlling Riddick or as the audience watching him. One of the really cool things about RPGs is that both sides are always there--half the fun of the game is switching between the two modes fluidly throughout play. Playing Riddick and watching Riddick in a movie have some things in common, but they have a loooooot different, too. It's satisfying laying down over the top descriptions to the things I'm doing in a RPG, but if that description stays purely in the narrative description and stays removed from the mechanics it starts to feel kind of hollow and reflexive after a while--it divorces player choice from player narration too much. It becomes too much about being the audience and not enough about being Riddick. The thing is, both taking a penalty for no reason and always being at max murder dudes are boring, choice-wise. Bad choices and superficial choices are both essentially no choices. What you want is trade-offs. As I said, though, the scene already has a trade-off baked into it--Riddick took a penalty to combat to gain a bonus to intimidation. RPGs shouldn't just be modeling the physics of fighting with a tea cup, they should ideally be modeling the line of reasoning (inside the character's head, even more so than inside the director's) that led to tea cup fighting in the first place.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 18:35 |
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Now that we've ARGUED about how to explain a movie in terms of D&D mechanics, maybe we can do other nerd social things, like determine what alignment the protagonist is, perhaps on a motivational poster background,
Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Oct 5, 2014 |
# ? Oct 5, 2014 18:44 |
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Davin Valkri posted:Somebody was making a PbtA hack of PG Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster stuff. What happened to that? Mostly, my thesis was what happened to that. That's done now but I want to finish my previous project, Legacy, before starting that - should have a kickstarter up in the next month for people interested in a PbtA game of rebuilding civilisation from the ruins of an apocalypse over multiple generations. OtspIII posted:The thing is, both taking a penalty for no reason and always being at max murder dudes are boring, choice-wise. Bad choices and superficial choices are both essentially no choices. What you want is trade-offs. As I said, though, the scene already has a trade-off baked into it--Riddick took a penalty to combat to gain a bonus to intimidation. RPGs shouldn't just be modeling the physics of fighting with a tea cup, they should ideally be modeling the line of reasoning (inside the character's head, even more so than inside the director's) that led to tea cup fighting in the first place. I'd agree with this - if you want players to make interesting choices you have to provide the framework those choices can happen in. The best way to do that is a system of tradeoffs, and I'd much rather take this sort of system over one where the response is "cool description, but it's the same roll you'd make anyway" or "a teacup? take -5 to attack and -4 to damage".
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 18:58 |
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Ningyou posted:actually can this just be tea party chat now because tea parties are pretty fuckin baller There are a couple people in this thread who tread dangerously close to getting a Mrs. Nesbitt avatar.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 19:12 |
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I feel like people are trying to win teacupchat. But the only way to win teacupchat is not to play.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 19:40 |
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dwarf74 posted:I feel like people are trying to win teacupchat. But the only way to win teacupchat is not to play. You could also drink tea out of it. That's a pretty great use of a teacup.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 19:41 |
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Night10194 posted:You could also drink tea out of it. That's a pretty great use of a teacup. I think we need a way to assign numbers to the tea drinking satisfaction of teacups, so that we can compare them to one another objectively. Also, there was a penalty to the roll, but Riddick spent a plot point to make the tea delicious.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 19:45 |
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FewtureMD posted:Is there a game for emulating backstabbing high society folks at a tea party? That'd be my ideal. Midsummer Woods?
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 19:48 |
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K Prime posted:That is because coffee is an abomination. Tea is love. Tea is life. but proper tea is thef
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 19:50 |
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Zurui posted:There are a couple people in this thread who tread dangerously close to getting a Mrs. Nesbitt avatar. You say that like it's a bad thing!
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 20:23 |
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OtspIII posted:Sorry to pop into this as it's dying down, but there are some concepts people aren't really bringing up that I figure are useful additions to the conversation. I'll agree here, but the example sorta destroyed the initial underlying point, which was "A fighter is not their weapon, a fighter is a fighter." Unless you are literally built around using your magic weapon, then yeah, the weapon should be an accessory to the fighter, not the other way around. And if you ARE built around having that magic weapon, then you kinda have to decide if the magic weapon is an important part of your character, or the important part. The problem is that, in basically every edition of D&D, the fighter is the accessory. He makes the weapon go - and without that weapon, he can't actually do much of anything. The teacup example was pushed to point out that in your standard action movie, the fighter is the fighter no matter what they have at hand. Riddick will kill you with your own knife. John McClane will hang you using some nearby chains. The same goes for your standard action game - Nathan Drake doesn't take a penalty to attack when he runs up to a dude, punches them right in their dick, and steals their ammo, or sneaks up behind them and snaps their neck; the boss of the Third Street Saints doesn't have to take a moment to re-arrange their feats to ensure they can kill people with the baseball bat instead of their pistol or their rifle. This is the thing D&D has warped - the idea that the fighter is a magical item receptacle. And that's what the argument is against - that the fighter is always at GO TIME, and all the magic weapon - or bigger machine gun, or fancier battle axe - does, is put them at GO TIME +.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 20:37 |
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I've had a little more time to look over Through The Breach, and I'm increasingly impressed. A few more things from my notes. Fairly big infodump warning, sorry. These are just notes I took as I was reading, not an organized review. Character creation is fake-random. Basically, you lay out 5 cards in a tarot cross. The center card tells you background, the other 4 give you spreads of numbers that you assign however you want to your stats and skills. So the random draw can't make one character better than another, since the total point value is the same no matter what card you pull, but it does make each character at least feel different. Also, your physical and your mental stats are different card draws, so you can't tank your physical stats to boost your mental, and vice versa. The other thing that happens in character creation is that each of the five cards gives you a little sentence, and when you string the sentences together you get a vague prophecy about your character. A REAL LIFE example: If you open the box best left closed he will know you not by your rage, but by your temperance as the witless man fears the child. He tightens the strings and tugs at the rivets and you are a breeze unto the leaves. Those 5 lines ARE your character arc for the campaign. Each session, the Fatemaster chooses a player, and designs the adventure around the next unresolved line of that character's prophecy. When that line is either fulfilled or subverted at the end of the session, that character gains either a stat advancement or manifests a rad magic power. The XP system is super simple, but has a neat touch. Every session, you get 1 XP, you can spend XP to improve your skills, higher ranks cost more XP. But even if you're saving up XP to improve a core skill, you're allowed to gain a new skill at rank 1 for free once per session instead of spending XP, so saving up to improve your depth doesn't come at the cost of expanding width. My notes on the equipment section just say 'gun porn'. But there's also steam-powered prosthetic limbs, so that's nice. The basic resolution system is identical to Malifaux's. If you're not familiar, you draw cards instead of rolling dice, add the value of the card to your skill, try to reach a target number. Sometimes you need a particular suit of card to do a thing, or to trigger a special ability. In TTB, the Fatemaster never ever touches the deck of cards except to shuffle it when it runs out. Since I already hack games into functioning like that whenever possible, I'm a fan. Every player gets their own personal 'twist' deck, starting at 13 cards, roughly customized at character creation. You draw 3 cards, and can play a card out of your hand to replace a card draw that you don't like. Each character chooses a 'pursuit' each session. They're like classes, but they're not nearly as restrictive. During play, your pursuit describes a particular type of skill check. For example, the mercenary's is Ranged Combat, the performer's is Social skills. If you fail that type of skill check, you get to draw a card from your twist deck into your hand, which is a neat mechanical way to encourage you to, uh, pursue your pursuit. The pursuit you choose also gives you a permanent Talent (feat, basically) at the end of the session. Speaking of Talents, a lot of talents require you to be BELOW average in a certain stat, and give you some way of turning your weakness into an advantage. One I like is 'Shrug Off', requiring a negative resilience. You're so used to the aches, pains, and minor illnesses from being kind of wimpy that you can spend a twist card to just outright ignore one condition that's afflicting you. Anyone can cast magic, even if they've never taken a "spellcaster" pursuit. You just need a Grimoire, and to work out which approach (of several options) to magic your character follows. You may not be GOOD at it, but there's no restriction. Magic is pretty free form. You choose one basic effect (Magia) like 'do damage' or 'move thing' or 'animate zambie', and any number of modifiers (Immuto), which combine to give you the difficulty of the skill check to cast the spell. Any cosmetic effects are up to you. The Fatemaster's book was written by someone familiar with modern storygaming design. It's full of advice about how to have the players drive the story, how to avoid saying no and how to work toward yes, all that stuff. NPC/Monster design seems super adjustable, similar to how D&D4 is. Statblocks give you the basic structure of what special actions the thing can do, and how its stats are adjusted from average, and you get a dial called 'Rank' that you can adjust freely to make things tougher or weaker. All in all, I'm fairly impressed. Malifaux 1st edition was full of clumsy, confusing mechanics; it was obviously a game made by artists. But between 1e and 2e Malifaux, Wyrd has hired and listened to real game designers, and the quality difference is really clear.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 20:44 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:This is the thing D&D has warped - the idea that the fighter is a magical item receptacle. And that's what the argument is against - that the fighter is always at GO TIME, and all the magic weapon - or bigger machine gun, or fancier battle axe - does, is put them at GO TIME +. Is that really not the case in D&D, though? I feel like D&D is actually pretty good at balancing a character's mix of inherent bonuses (from ability scores, feats, levels, etc) and equipment-based bonuses. Between two characters who are otherwise identical, it'll be the one with the better gear who has an advantage, but I don't feel like the difference is too huge otherwise. It's probably a bit more pronounced in editions with quickly ascending ACs, but in general I'm not sure that the difference between a +1 sword and a mundane one is worth even as much as a level. Unless you're talking about a guy kitted out in gear versus someone naked, in which case things get a bit more pronounced. Even a level 5 or so fighter shouldn't have any problem taking on some low-level mooks bare-handed, though, thanks to strength bonuses and high hit-points. I feel like I'm maybe still missing something about your perspective, though. To try to use a concrete example, how many levels higher do you think a mundanely equipped fighter in D&D should have to be to take on someone fully kitted out in level-appropriate magic gear? How about a naked fighter versus someone kitted out level-appropriately? Are you saying that the differences should be less than a level, or that they should just be smaller than they are right now? I should probably note that I'm intentionally avoiding utility abilities for now. That's a good discussion, but it's also a huge and messy one.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 21:07 |
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Ningyou posted:WELL THEN I GUESS I BETTER DIG A HOLE IN THE FRONT YARD AND CLIMB IN BECAUSE I GUESS I'M DEAD TO YOU god what a jerk Coffee is best when it's bitter and black. Anyone who says otherwise is a commie. K Prime posted:That is because coffee is an abomination. Tea is love. Tea is life. Case in point.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 21:10 |
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Tendales posted:I've had a little more time to look over Through The Breach, and I'm increasingly impressed. A few more things from my notes. Fairly big infodump warning, sorry. These are just notes I took as I was reading, not an organized review. This sounds awesome. Is there a way for people who haven't backed the Kickstarter to get a hold of Through the Breach yet?
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 21:39 |
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FewtureMD posted:Is there a game for emulating backstabbing high society folks at a tea party? That'd be my ideal.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 21:43 |
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Spincut posted:This sounds awesome. Is there a way for people who haven't backed the Kickstarter to get a hold of Through the Breach yet? We just got in our first retail copies this weekend, so ask your FLGS if they can get it. It looks like Wyrd hasn't made it available on their website yet.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 21:45 |
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grassy gnoll posted:but proper tea is thef
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 21:48 |
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Ferrinus posted:He should have penalties for using a teacup in order for the fact of his using a teacup to be impressive. That's the point of the drat scene: that Riddick so outclassed those shmoes that he didn't need a real weapon to insanely brutally slay them. You'll notice that in later, more dangerous situations Riddick did not deliberately handicap himself and instead actually tried his hardest and used the best stuff he could get his hands on, because he is not an actual, literal circus clown. Nah, it wouldn't have fit the tone. Riddick *knows* he can kill a dude with a teacup. That's what makes it impressive. He knows he's deadly with anything and behaves accordingly. If he killed a dude with a teacup in a moment of desperation of when fate brought it his way that'd be a different kind of scene. It's not a gamble. In a game, this is theoretically possible, but in, say, not 4e D&D, this would never happen because it could only occur in an unbalanced encounter. The funny thing is that in 4e this could happen in a balanced encounter with a minion, or could be expressed as a skill challenge. In 5e this is possible inasmuch as 5e draws from 4e's design, so John is really wrong about 4e's level of support for what he says he wants to do as a fighter. (Especially since 4e pulls back on magical bonuses and includes an inherent bonus option.) But this is kind of a sideshow to what John is really saying. (Read to the end!) I think the fact that he likes these scenes is getting in the way of his real argument, which is that RPGs should be about generating spotlight moments in the story in a fair way for all participants (if they want them--strong supporting roles, otherwise). And that's a pretty decent. The fact that he's not calling this "game balance" is a rhetorical device, since spotlight balance really is a form of game balance. I love 4e and John hates it, but I think it does a lot of what he wants games to do. Dailies are spotlight moments in fight scenes. There's a place for supporting characters, and dramatic rhythm. But I get John, because 4e is, I am sorry to say, one of the shittiest-written versions of the game, and reads like the authors don't give a gently caress about stories, and neither should you. Everything I said about why the game is awesome? That's what I draw out of a system that doesn't actually explain what it can do or inspire enthusiasm. If 4e didn't, sorry kids, completely suck at presenting itself as a story-generating engine, 5e would iterate from it. After you get through the cruft, John is making a really standard indie games argument to drop anything extraneous to the goal of spotlighting dramatic moments over the course of telling a story. This isn't my thing, personally, because I find it detracts from the authenticity of the experience. Games that switch the point of interaction to the non-diagetic end up feeling fake or superficial.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 22:06 |
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FewtureMD posted:Is there a game for emulating backstabbing high society folks at a tea party? That'd be my ideal. Skulduggery by Robin Laws! It's basically the genericized second edition of the Dying Earth RPG, which was already an RPG that privileged social shenanigans over combat, down to idiom of speech. The first setting in the book is The Thick of It the game. One of the extra settings you can download is about cardinals picking a new pope.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 22:32 |
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Nah, it wouldn't have fit the tone. Riddick *knows* he can kill a dude with a teacup. That's what makes it impressive. He knows he's deadly with anything and behaves accordingly. If he killed a dude with a teacup in a moment of desperation of when fate brought it his way that'd be a different kind of scene. It's not a gamble. "Nah" to what? I agree with you. It's important that, on some hypothetical Chronicles of Riddick weapons table (even a super simple one), "teacup" is ranked lower than "assault rifle". That way Riddick either choosing to use one or being forced to use one has some sort of weight. quote:I love 4e and John hates it, but I think it does a lot of what he wants games to do. Dailies are spotlight moments in fight scenes. There's a place for supporting characters, and dramatic rhythm. But I get John, because 4e is, I am sorry to say, one of the shittiest-written versions of the game, and reads like the authors don't give a gently caress about stories, and neither should you. Everything I said about why the game is awesome? That's what I draw out of a system that doesn't actually explain what it can do or inspire enthusiasm. If 4e didn't, sorry kids, completely suck at presenting itself as a story-generating engine, 5e would iterate from it. Absolutely true. It kills me, because the underlying rules assumptions of 4e actually imply a really interesting magical universe that's a lot more surprising and nuanced than the one you get out of 3.5e, but the corebooks are so, drat, terrible at showing it to you. I've got literal pages of material written down about how the "you can only prepare 3 daily attack spells at a time unless you're like level 20 or something" system causes wizards to rank themselves in academy structures and assume that legends of mages who were able to prepare four greater spells at a time were mythical... but I had to do all that because the corebook, which introduced the wizard class, did not. Now, the actual story material the corebooks had, especially the interplay they described between martial/arcane/divine/psionic power, was I think really good and I'll defend it to the death - but we never got a setting that took it seriously and engaged with it. Even 4e preview material went on a bit about how the new rules were going to support and expand settings - like how the division between Rituals and Spells now opened a lot more ground for citizen thaumaturges who weren't proper fireball-slinging adventurers - but that was never really picked up. It's my understanding that the various planar supplements were a lot better about elaborating on the 4e setting, but who reads those? quote:After you get through the cruft, John is making a really standard indie games argument to drop anything extraneous to the goal of spotlighting dramatic moments over the course of telling a story. This isn't my thing, personally, because I find it detracts from the authenticity of the experience. Games that switch the point of interaction to the non-diegetic end up feeling fake or superficial. Yeah, I don't like being able to spend Plot Points to cause a Twist or whatever, I like rules that tell me how much my guy can lift or how good his hold on his remaining sanity is or whatever.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 22:37 |
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Whatever floats your boat I guess, but that entire previous post there is basically a laundry list of the kinds of things I wish RPGs would get over.
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 22:49 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 09:25 |
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lol if u drink tea; coffee supremacy
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# ? Oct 5, 2014 23:09 |