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I think it's worth stating in a D&D styled dungeon crawl, a less powerful character with less options (say, a fighter) is going to be able to do less, and be less effective, and less fun, than a more powerful character with many many more options that invalidate entire other classes (drawing a blank for a good example of what class this would be). Meanwhile, in most things Stolze does, power on your sheet (being able to explode people instantly, having perfect charisma, honest to god invulnerability) means that yeah, you get to be really good at that (or even a handful of things), but a skilled GM still ought to find a way to get under your skin. Stolze's work is very character driven, in that regard. Yes, it requires a more capable GM to pull off more challenging things than "i'll throw a lich at them this time, that should slow them down", but for a lot of people that's a very rewarding style of play. Yeah, it requires much more trust between all of the players, because there's less of an expected "yeah we'll get together and clear some dungeons" approach and more of a "man what are these crazy loving idiots going to get up to this time?" no holds barred approach. So yeah, a mechanomancer might be able to churn out murderbots. But what happens when they start putting them to use? Yeah, a kleptomancer might be able to accumulate charges through senseless theft. But what happens when they steal from the wrong person, or steal the wrong thing? That's where the good stuff is, I feel. Edit: It sounds like I'm saying that "well they're overpowered but the balancing factor is the GM fucks them over!" but that's not really what I'm trying to communicate. I'll think on it more. Edit2: Essentially, a powerful character should know beforehand that abusing their power will bring a shitstorm down on them, and thus knowing how and when to use that power becomes a part of the game. Capntastic fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Nov 5, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2014 03:53
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I think what you're trying to say is that you can't approach UA like D&D or a murderhobo simulator, because that's not what the game's trying to do at all. UA isn't about killing things and taking their stuff, it's about exploring the price of power and the consequences of your actions.
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Nov 5, 2014 04:00
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I don't know if this is really a balance issue per se but some of the adept schools seemed like they were a lot less dynamic and more "rooted in place," which could cause some snags depending on the direction the game took. Like, Biblomancy is all about accumulating a huge stash of books and then kinda just sitting on it, it's a hard sell to then go "okay we need to go on a sprawling cross-country roadtrip in search of Real Cosmic Power, guess you've gotta leave the ol' collection behind." The same with Cliomancy historical sites, where to gain your mojo you basically have to stake out and claim a piece of territory and then fight off people trying to horn in on it. For some games this isn't a problem, you can get a lot of mileage out of a game that's focused on a single city no sweat, but it does mean that anything that crops up which might take the PCs away from that power base they've had to establish because that's the only way their mojo works becomes an unwelcome dilemma while Entropomancers can do stupid poo poo anywhere.
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Nov 5, 2014 04:06
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Evil Mastermind posted:I think what you're trying to say is that you can't approach UA like D&D or a murderhobo simulator, because that's not what the game's trying to do at all. UA isn't about killing things and taking their stuff, it's about exploring the price of power and the consequences of your actions. Yeah. Power on your sheet in UA is almost always going to be a liability. Even having a full auto AK in your trunk when you get pulled over by the cops is going to be more dangerous than having a handgun in your glovebox.
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Nov 5, 2014 04:13
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Effectronica posted:As for your second paragraph, that's not the Wizard Problem, because it's an essential conceit of the setting that anybody really powerful within the gamespace has mystic jojo backing them up. I think I just had the best idea for an adept school. It's not my fault - none of it! It's all my stand's doing!
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Nov 5, 2014 04:14
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Idran posted:As someone that is awful at evaluating balance, what's the problem with the other adept schools? I've always thought about playing a Bibliomancer or a Plutomancer just because thematically they seemed neat, and I've never noticed any glaring imbalances amongst the avatars and adepts (some of the avatars seem less interesting than others, but I have to admit that I never looked at any of them and thought "that seems boring"), but it's not honestly something I've ever looked for. Going with the default examples, Dipsomancers, Epideromancers, and Entropomancers can charge up much more easily than Bibliomancers and Plutomancers, so they can have more charges on them and are better able to deal with breaking taboo. In addition, the social consequences of being one, even one that doesn't game the system only charging up when they want to do something big, are much less. For example, if a Dipsomancer sobers up, he loses all his charges, but he can recover all of them the next day. A Bibliomancer that damages any book loses all the charges in her library and has to buy them back, at $100 a pop for minors, at GM fiat. The thing is, Bibliomancers aren't even any more powerful than Dipsomancers to compensate. Soul Sip and Ghost Vintage mean that a theorycrafted Dipsomancer could accumulate a shitload of skills just by gnawing them off of ghosts. As for Avatars, well, a Merchant with 55% can trade intangible things like skills or memories, while a Messenger with 55% can ignore minor obstacles on his way. Not to mention that an MVP, say, is going to be hard to work into an adventuring kind of game.
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Nov 5, 2014 04:21
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Kai Tave posted:I don't know if this is really a balance issue per se but some of the adept schools seemed like they were a lot less dynamic and more "rooted in place," which could cause some snags depending on the direction the game took. Like, Biblomancy is all about accumulating a huge stash of books and then kinda just sitting on it, it's a hard sell to then go "okay we need to go on a sprawling cross-country roadtrip in search of Real Cosmic Power, guess you've gotta leave the ol' collection behind." The same with Cliomancy historical sites, where to gain your mojo you basically have to stake out and claim a piece of territory and then fight off people trying to horn in on it. Cliomancers actually have a big "exploit" (quotes intended) where major charges are much easier for them to get than Tynes and Stolze or the playerbase assumed.
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Nov 5, 2014 04:24
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Effectronica posted:Cliomancers actually have a big "exploit" (quotes intended) where major charges are much easier for them to get than Tynes and Stolze or the playerbase assumed. How's that?
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Nov 5, 2014 04:29
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Idran posted:How's that? Arthurian legends are real in UA. Granted, there's a decent chance that Cliomancers have already harvested these, but Camelot, Tintagel, and so on could all be searched out, by being rare enough and famous enough to hold major charges. There are a couple other mythical/legendary cycles that are also probably real, which would add even more locations that are obscure physically but massively famous, enough to short-circuit the assumptions of the Cliomancy school.
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Nov 5, 2014 04:37
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Effectronica posted:Arthurian legends are real in UA. Granted, there's a decent chance that Cliomancers have already harvested these, but Camelot, Tintagel, and so on could all be searched out, by being rare enough and famous enough to hold major charges. There are a couple other mythical/legendary cycles that are also probably real, which would add even more locations that are obscure physically but massively famous, enough to short-circuit the assumptions of the Cliomancy school. I wouldn't really call that much easier. First, you'd have to actually manage to find them. Second, like you said, there's a decent chance of them already having been harvested. I'm also not really sure how this short-circuits the assumptions? It adds a few locations, but how much does that really increase the total number worldwide by?
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Nov 5, 2014 05:07
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Idran posted:I wouldn't really call that much easier. First, you'd have to actually manage to find them. Second, like you said, there's a decent chance of them already having been harvested. It's a whole lot easier than securing any other eligible site against opposing Cliomancers for a decade, or visiting the Moon, because you could conceivably buy the land and seal it off, which you couldn't do elsewhere. More importantly, every other location you could harvest significant (and thus major) charges is necessarily a tourist location because people have to know the location as a place in and of itself for it to count. But legendary places like Camelot are famous as places in and of themselves while still being unknown in location, which breaks the principle.
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Nov 5, 2014 05:13
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Effectronica posted:It's a whole lot easier than securing any other eligible site against opposing Cliomancers for a decade, or visiting the Moon, because you could conceivably buy the land and seal it off, which you couldn't do elsewhere. More importantly, every other location is necessarily a tourist location because people have to know the location as a place in and of itself for it to count. But legendary places like Camelot are famous as places in and of themselves while still being unknown in location, which breaks the principle. Good luck finding camelot, you and every other british cliomancer is going to go so hard to find it. And if word ever got out you would be hunted down, tortured for the location, and killed by either rival cliomancers or one of the many occult organizations.
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Nov 5, 2014 05:15
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homerlaw posted:Good luck finding camelot, you and every other british cliomancer is going to go so hard to find it. And if word ever got out you would be hunted down, tortured for the location, and killed by either rival cliomancers or one of the many occult organizations. The average person in the occult underground isn't going to know that Camelot is/was a real place. Only someone stumbling upon the Grail Knights is going to have some sort of independent confirmation of its existence. And once you've harvested the major charge, nobody is going to care because it's been used and you can have your little fief while they scramble for the leftovers. That would just be pure retribution on the GM's part for the player doing something clever to get a mid-range major charge effect. Not to mention that there are a whole lot of Arthurian locations that aren't Camelot but are still potent in this sense- Camlann, the location of the Sword in the Stone in London, Joyeuse-Garde, etc.
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Nov 5, 2014 05:22
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Effectronica posted:The average person in the occult underground isn't going to know that Camelot is/was a real place. Only someone stumbling upon the Grail Knights is going to have some sort of independent confirmation of its existence. And once you've harvested the major charge, nobody is going to care because it's been used and you can have your little fief while they scramble for the leftovers. That would just be pure retribution on the GM's part for the player doing something clever to get a mid-range major charge effect. Not to mention that there are a whole lot of Arthurian locations that aren't Camelot but are still potent in this sense- Camlann, the location of the Sword in the Stone in London, Joyeuse-Garde, etc. Are you really suggesting that no one in the school that's all about drawing power from historic locations has realized that the most culturally famous king England has ever had was a real guy and at least tried to find his castle? Yeah, you'd need to be a monomaniacally obsessed nutjob to find it when centuries of normal people looking around haven't, but the occult underground is almost entirely monomaniacally obsessed nutjobs. Don't get me wrong, the search for The Actual Camelot would make for one hell of a UA game. I just think you're severely underestimating how many other people in the British Underground would be really into trying to find that stuff.
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Nov 5, 2014 07:03
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Capntastic posted:So yeah, a mechanomancer might be able to churn out murderbots. But what happens when they start putting them to use? Yeah, a kleptomancer might be able to accumulate charges through senseless theft. But what happens when they steal from the wrong person, or steal the wrong thing? That's where the good stuff is, I feel. Then the game is now about them rather than the guy who wrote Avatar: The Chronicler on his sheet. "There are plot consequences" is meant to be what the entire game is about so being exempted from directing the fun because you're not playing one of the adept/avatar schools with agency is pretty lovely. That game I was talking about where we were a Cosmic cabal on first name terms with Comte? Our 88% or something Bibliomancer barely ever got to do magic because it turns out getting rare hundred dollar books is something you have to kind of go out of your way to do, nevermind 500 dollar books. Meanwhile Dipso is making GBS threads out magic right left and centre, and his is arguably more useful in the first place. Relatedly, the Dipsomancer charging mechanics need a rework, because the delineation between "never ever get a significant charge" and "get nothing but sigs" is a bit of a dumb one. We've houseruled it to be similar to Bibliomancers: a rare, significant and expensive enough liquor can get you a sig. This is why I was kind of disappointed to hear that they're keeping the same rules system and writing new schools. Unknown Armies is the game that got me into RPGs, the first I ever played and one of my all time favourites, but it has big problems. Another edition was an opportunity to fix them while updating the game to 2015. I'm just hoping the new schools are good.
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Nov 5, 2014 13:04
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Are you really suggesting that no one in the school that's all about drawing power from historic locations has realized that the most culturally famous king England has ever had was a real guy and at least tried to find his castle? Yeah, you'd need to be a monomaniacally obsessed nutjob to find it when centuries of normal people looking around haven't, but the occult underground is almost entirely monomaniacally obsessed nutjobs. Why would they? The modern Underground has largely discarded Theosophism, Hermeticism, Goetic demonology, and Kabbalah, and pretty much all of the older incarnations of occultism except where they intersect with modern stuff. They have no particular reason to believe that it's anything other than important, potent symbolism. In fact, given that the described Lancelot can't remember whether Camelot was the hall of a Late Antiquity Celtic warlord or the castle and town of the High King of all Britain, it's entirely possible that it was erased or transmuted the last time the Invisible Clergy filled up, and the apocalypse is actually a whimper in-setting.
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Nov 5, 2014 13:28
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If you want to roll up a combat god in UA, it's pretty easy: roll up a cliomancer, magic your gun-fu skill to ludicrous levels and switch on hall of mirrors. It also is the least interesting thing about the system and the setting. Powergaming in UA is terribly boring. If your problem with the mechanics is "Camelot is real", so Cliomancers have it too easy, then I'd be worried about playing a game of UA with you. Of course, play the game you want to play, not the game other people think you should be playing. The way we balanced Cliomancers in our games is that they come with a pretty nasty history - the Atlantians/Sleepers could come knocking at any time and take your charging spots, and you'd give them access willingly. Certain archetypes and adepts work better for a road trip style game than others, admittedly. Urbanomancy would not be a good school to take on the road, while avatars of the masterless man and pilgrims are ideal.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:17
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Sometimes it is very worthwhile to trade the power of flight for the power of attorney.
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Nov 5, 2014 17:06
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Afriscipio posted:If you want to roll up a combat god in UA, it's pretty easy: roll up a cliomancer, magic your gun-fu skill to ludicrous levels and switch on hall of mirrors. It also is the least interesting thing about the system and the setting. Powergaming in UA is terribly boring. Unless players are really willing to play up the crazy adpet factor - which makes them potentially toxic to the other players - or the DM keeps generating a million roadblocks that other characters wouldn't hit - then there's an imbalance. I love the hell out of UA and think a good group can work through anything, but it's something to be aware of when rolling characters.
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Nov 5, 2014 19:36
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So I've been able to turn my wife, who has never played a tabletop RPG, into a devoted addict of Wild Talents. She'll literally tell me every day "I can't wait to play more Wild Talents." She loves noir too, and I just discovered the existence of A Dirty World, so that may just blow her mind. Does anyone here have any experience with it?
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Nov 7, 2014 16:53
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It is awesome, buy it. Just be sure to make a cheat sheet of how one gains xp.
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Nov 7, 2014 17:11
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Weird question but does Greg Stolze live in london? I have a friend of a friend who is american, is called greg and is hugely in to traditional games and also looks a lot like the results for greg stolze on google images.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:09
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Nope, Aurora Illinois.
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Nov 7, 2014 21:10
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Strange Matter posted:So I've been able to turn my wife, who has never played a tabletop RPG, into a devoted addict of Wild Talents. She'll literally tell me every day "I can't wait to play more Wild Talents." I've posted some actual plays of A Dirty World (it is very dirty) http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/category/systems/ore-system/a-dirty-world/
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Nov 7, 2014 23:43
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Speaking of videomancers, someone on a different forum pointed out that "Too Many Cooks" is basically what some videomancer with a bunch of major charges did to a bunch of people he really hated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8
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Nov 9, 2014 04:20
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Thanks for getting that loving song stuck in my head again. ~Too Many Cooks~
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Nov 9, 2014 04:23
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Swagger Dagger posted:Thanks for getting that loving song stuck in my head again. You're welcome!
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Nov 9, 2014 04:25
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Thank you so much for sharing that. Brb, writing a dual system UA/Primetime Adventures one shot.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:49
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Been playing Wild Talents for the past three weeks and it's been a blast. I'm trying to get more adventurous in my character designs, and I've got a couple of questions. Question 1: Foci The Essentials manual gives a couple examples of Foci. The first is an enhanced machine gun, and the second is a suit of powered armor. In the case of the Machine Gun, the Focus Extras and Flaws ends up making it so that the total cost is 1 point per die. One of these Flaws is Operational Skill (Rifle), and the rules for the Flaw state that you use the lower of your two dice pools when making an attack. Ultimately, the manual gives the gun 10d for 10 points. However, since the gun has Operational Skill (Rifle), then its true cost isn't really 10 points. Its true cost is 10 points plus the cost of raising your Range Attack (Rifle) to an adequate level; therefore for a normal character that cost is at most 20 points (10 for the machine gun, 10 for 5 skill points in Rifle). But what I'm thinking is this: since you can add Qualities, Extras and Flaws directly to Skills, would it not be more direct to build weaponized foci as Skills, more or less? Let's say that I'm creating a character that uses the Caster Gun from Outlaw Star. Using the rules as directly explained in the book, I'd want to create the gun itself for X points per die where X must be at least 1 , and then buy 9 or 10 points in it (total cost 10x), and then buy, let's say, 5 points in Ranged Weapon (Caster) for a total cost of 9x+10, minimum 20 points. OR I create a HyperSkill, Range Weapon (Caster), for 1 point per die. To it I attach Focus along with all of the all of the Focus Extras and Flaws that come with it, and then the rest of the Extras and Flaws needed to create the Caster Gun. Let's now assume that the total Focus points comes to -2 (entirely possible, due to the way that Foci work), and the rest of the Flaws and Extras associated is +2. The end result is that the total cost for the Caster Gun in this scenario is 1 point per die, so I'm literally able to get the same effect as the standard method for, at best, 1/4th the cost. Does this seem like a valid approach? I could also very easily be doing exactly what I was warned about with Wild Talents-- breaking the game in half by using more advanced character building knowledge. Question 2: Variable Effect Can someone please explain the Variable Effect Extra to me? I don't at all understand it from the manual's description.
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Nov 14, 2014 15:37
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Strange Matter posted:Been playing Wild Talents for the past three weeks and it's been a blast. I'm trying to get more adventurous in my character designs, and I've got a couple of questions. This is from memory, feel free to correct me if I am wrong! In regard to your first question, I believe you are correct. The tradeoff would be one of flexibility, powers are specific and therefore you would not be able to use that skill for any gun, but only that particular type of gun. Keeping it as a focus both gives the character an external source of power for those who are interested and allows it to be piggybacked onto a strong, versatile skill. As for variable effect: each power quality for a power does a specific thing. Variable effect allows a power to do a variety of things, constrained if you so choose by flaws. The flaw Only For Variable Effect means that the power on its own does not have a specific effect but can do a variety of things. If I have the Useful quality on my Magic power and give it Variable Effect and the flaw Only for Variable Effect, there is no particular thing that happens every time I use that power, each time I have to specify what I'm using the variable effect for. If I didn't have that flaw, the power would have one main thing it does but could be used to do other things. Variable Effect is one of the strongest extras in the game if it's not constrained in some fashion, thus the price.
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Nov 14, 2014 19:09
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So I just got myself Wild Talents and decided to have a go at making a dude. A dude who basically is a regular joe schmuck who happens to have a pair of gauntlets/gloves/whatever that let him either decrease or increase the effect of gravity on any object or person. What I need is someone who could tell me whether I failed miserably at wrapping my brains around this. He's only got one power that he can use to Attack, Defend, and do a bunch of other things, so clearly he puts all three Qualities on it. For the Attack, the free Capacity is Range. I give it Attack +2, Engulf, and Non-Physical as Extras and Focus along with If/Then (Gravity increase/decrease only) as Flaws, the latter meaning that he can't harm things that aren't affected by gravity (such as someone with the power to turn insubstantial or existing as an astral projection or whatever) or if he's fighting somewhere with no gravity to effect. The Defense is just a plain Self defense with the same Flaws. He can only defend himself from physical attacks that can be stopped by affecting gravity; psionics and magics blast him all the same. For the Useful I figured I'd just put Speed as the free Capacity and have him mostly use it to decrease the effect of gravity on himself, letting him jump around and run faster. I also give it Range so he can do the same for other people. Then I slap Variable Effect in there for all the other things you could do by decreasing/increasing the gravity of objects or people. I didn't give it Mass since he doesn't have any innate ability to move objects even if they're weightless aside from punching them real hard. Same Flaws as the Attack and Defend. Finally I give the Focus the Delicate and Immutable Flaws, meaning I end up with something like this: code:
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Nov 22, 2014 20:04
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HerraS posted:So I just got myself Wild Talents and decided to have a go at making a dude. A dude who basically is a regular joe schmuck who happens to have a pair of gauntlets/gloves/whatever that let him either decrease or increase the effect of gravity on any object or person.
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Nov 24, 2014 14:59
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Strange Matter posted:I may be wrong but I think for the Useful Quality, you'd need to add the Mass Quality for it to be able to affect other people at a distance; in this case you are literally using your Power to affect their Mass, which I'd think would be a textbook example of that Capacity. I originally had all three Capacities on it, but then I read Stolze's article about building powers and he gives an example of using Variable Effect to give an attack the Mass Capacity if he wants to cause knockback. I figured the dude would mostly use the Useful to make people lighter so they can leap and run all over the place and I see that as a Speed power.
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Nov 24, 2014 21:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:Speaking of videomancers...  I think my brain just melted a bit.
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Nov 25, 2014 07:52
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So here's some homebrew rules regarding ORE combat that I'm looking for some input on. Basically, I want to counter the dominance of called headshots in combat, especially called headshots with wiggle dice. The problem that I've been experiencing is that they are practically impossible to defend against without hard dice; the end result is that combat winds up boiling down to who can get the best headshots first. So here is what I'm working on: 1.) Hit locations are rearranged so that the Headboxes are located at the 1 location 2.) Fixed Dice are substituted for Hard Dice Now it becomes actually possible to defend against headshots, because a defender just has to match the attacker's Width if they want to Dodge or Block rather than their Width AND roll 10s. I think this better reflects a combat environment where hitting a guy in the head who is conscious of your attack is a lot more difficult than going for their chests and arms. Any thoughts on this?
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Nov 30, 2014 22:07
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Strange Matter posted:So here's some homebrew rules regarding ORE combat that I'm looking for some input on. Reign's solution to headshot supremacy was to make head armour really effective - just like in real life. It wasn't too difficult to get hold of a steel helmet with AR3, which would bounce anything lower than a quad unless you were using a massive weapon. If you want to do a similar thing in Wild Talents, which it sounds like you're playing, it'd be relatively easy to make helmets with 2 or 3 HAR at Hit Location 10 available, stacking with whatever they already have. Armour does work a bit differently in Reign to LAR and HAR, however, so I'm not sure if you'd need to tweak it. Reign Armour is 1 less Shock and 1 less Killing per point of Armor, which is slightly (but significantly) different to HAR in that it doesn't ruin sets. Still, if doing a headshot meant you had to deal with an extra couple of HAR and/or LAR they'd be a significantly less optimal choice. I remember that getting the Hyperbody guy to choke people with lots of armor to death became the Plan B of choice when I ran Wild Talents.
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Dec 1, 2014 01:14
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Yeah, REIGN has the best combat in all of the ORE games. Armor is really effective, but there are martial techniques that deal with that and even if you don't have them there is the tried and true method of tackling the bastard and choking him to death.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:11
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Or just grappling and taking their helmet off. Every party needs a Body 6 Victorious Submission practitioner.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:29
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ZearothK posted:Yeah, REIGN has the best combat in all of the ORE games. Armor is really effective, but there are martial techniques that deal with that and even if you don't have them there is the tried and true method of tackling the bastard and choking him to death. Full disclosure, this is part of a project that I'm starting to create an ORE space opera type game.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:42
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As Reign is under discussion, Arc Dream is running a Cyber Monday sale and the Reign Enchiridion is currently on sale for $5! http://arcdream.com/home/2014/11/one-roll-engine-cyber-monday-sale-save-these-books-from-doom/
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Dec 1, 2014 14:56
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