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I love it when people make these fangames but over-mechanicalize everything and don't keep any of the tone of the original property.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:I love it when people make these fangames but over-mechanicalize everything and don't keep any of the tone of the original property. To be fair "making an over-complicated fangame that misses the point" is like a rite of elfgaming passage. I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people posting here have done something similar in the past. The world of indie RPG design is littered with homebrew Final Fantasy tabletop games.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:56
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Kai Tave posted:To be fair "making an over-complicated fangame that misses the point" is like a rite of elfgaming passage. I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people posting here have done something similar in the past. The world of indie RPG design is littered with homebrew Final Fantasy tabletop games. Don't I know that. Still, a lot of it comes from a lack of realization that mechanics actually do effect tone. Lots of fan game makers don't seem to get that. Hell, lots of professional game makers don't seem to get that.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:57
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Kai Tave posted:To be fair "making an over-complicated fangame that misses the point" is like a rite of elfgaming passage. I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people posting here have done something similar in the past. The world of indie RPG design is littered with homebrew Final Fantasy tabletop games. I never have, because I've never finished a project.  
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Nov 26, 2014 03:02
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Same.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:22
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Kai Tave posted:To be fair "making an over-complicated fangame that misses the point" is like a rite of elfgaming passage. I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people posting here have done something similar in the past. The world of indie RPG design is littered with homebrew Final Fantasy tabletop games. Mine wasn't Final Fantasy, it was Persona! Except I had never heard of Persona, I just thought the idea of teen students fighting monsters was radical. I'd also never played an RPG "right" before, so it had a bunch of weird rules that were half-based on video games. Everyone had a special gun that could be loaded with different kinds of elemental ammunition represented by different colored dice, and if you used certain combinations you'd get bonuses. ...This is making me wonder if I have that notebook anywhere.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:36
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Speaking of... I just started reading the Mistborn series. Has anyone tried out the rpg? Trying to decide whether or not to add it to my Christmas list.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:36
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Evil Mastermind posted:I love it when people make these fangames but over-mechanicalize everything and don't keep any of the tone of the original property. It's on 1d4chan, which means it's a product of 4chan's /tg/ board, who are notorious for starting up ambitious, mostly-idiotic projects and then getting burned out incredibly quickly on them before really finishing anything. Last time I saw one, it was an attempt to codify Dragonball Z style super-martial-arts-action into a strict, class-based system that involved point buy through power levels and a lot of arguing about the difference between physical damage and ki energy damage. And somewhere I have a .txt file featuring the worst Adventure Time RPG ever made, using (once again) a strict, class-based system and over 50% of it is just spell lists. I think they also tried converting Dark Heresy into a Transformers game, too, although I might be mixing up my WH40K properties there. If there's anything that they do even worse, it's settings, because with settings they can't just rip mechanics out of 3.5 and call it a day.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:38
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About the only thing I liked from the /tg/ board was the Zelda RPG, and I haven't checked that out in a long time so I assume they hosed it up like they always do.Fuego Fish posted:If there's anything that they do even worse, it's settings, because with settings they can't just rip mechanics out of 3.5 and call it a day. Ugh the universal setting was the wooooorst.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:43
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http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Unified_campaign_setting 2nd sentence of the article: quote:The setting as a whole receives considerable criticism as "furry" due to the prevalence of beast races. e: Everoc Political Regions Corgyn'Bre Dwarven Lordships -Diadem Vosterus -Blodsvargen Geographic Regions Blodsvargen Corgyn'Bre Diadem Vosterus 
Kellsterik fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 03:49
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Ryoshi posted:Mine wasn't Final Fantasy, it was Persona! Except I had never heard of Persona, I just thought the idea of teen students fighting monsters was radical. Actually do this because that sounds kind of cool. Fuego Fish posted:It's on 1d4chan, which means it's a product of 4chan's /tg/ board, who are notorious for starting up ambitious, mostly-idiotic projects and then getting burned out incredibly quickly on them before really finishing anything. Again, I think you've just described RPG homebrew as a whole.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:04
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dwarf74 posted:Speaking of... I just started reading the Mistborn series. Has anyone tried out the rpg? Trying to decide whether or not to add it to my Christmas list. I've run it a time or two, it's good but has some mechanical oddness. Definitely worth a buy if you really like the series, as it was made with extensive assistance from the author to make sure the magic and setting are book accurate.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:05
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Aw dammit man I really wanted to talk about how people play the same system for decades and now we are on to homebrew insanity Wait--I BET THE TWO CAN WORK TOGETHER I remember the blatant Vampire live-action knock-off* I played at Gen-Con 1997, "Society in Shadow." Despite being a game whose primary innovation and reason to exist was "the use of drawing a randomly-colored marble out of a back for conflict resolution," the game had apparently been going on for years and was run at dozens of other conventions, all because these people apparently did not want to accept that maybe they should just be playing Vampire instead. I admit I almost did not post this, but then I found that they are STILL AROUND IN 2014 and drat if their webpage is not named for the fact that you draw a marble out of a bag for conflict resolution. You know what, I am starting to think I missed the boat by not becoming one of these people in 1997 *well, calling it a blatant knock-off when someone who literally just copied and pasted Vampire is a topic of discussion seems a little unfair, at least they just took the same ideas and rewrote the game instead
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Nov 26, 2014 04:14
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Engine Heart and Chapter Master came from /tg/ and they are pretty good. However both projects were driven primarily by one author (programmer in the case of Chapter Master) rather than being crowd sourced.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:17
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Say what you will about the mario RPGquote:Abilities: Bomb - For breaking down walls or just making an explosive impression, a Bob-omb may self-detonate at-will for a number of times per day equal to her Coolness rating. The force of her explosion is equal to her Power rating. She must recuperate for a turn after exploding. is pretty hilarious.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:33
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Quarex posted:Aw dammit man I really wanted to talk about how people play the same system for decades and now we are on to homebrew insanity "How can I make rolling 1d6 seem more interesting, hmm, I know."
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Nov 26, 2014 04:48
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Kai Tave posted:To be fair "making an over-complicated fangame that misses the point" is like a rite of elfgaming passage. I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people posting here have done something similar in the past. The world of indie RPG design is littered with homebrew Final Fantasy tabletop games. I still have kicking around in my computer a folder labeled "Mem Key Backup (10-15-05)" that is chock full of old RPG conversions and notes and poo poo. Every once in a while I peek in at to see what a dumbass I was as a 20 year old.  The biggest folder is my conversion of various Gundam OYW-0083 (+Wing) to BESM. And its all terrible.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:50
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Kellsterik posted:Corgyn'Bre Oh yeah, and the fuckers stole my corgis  Nothing quite cheers me up like seeing people repurpose the Zybourne Clock material for their own devices. It's sort of like being partially responsible for a new mythology, which is cool even if that mythology's theme is "failure".
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Nov 26, 2014 05:00
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Fuego Fish posted:It's on 1d4chan, which means it's a product of 4chan's /tg/ board, who are notorious for starting up ambitious, mostly-idiotic projects and then getting burned out incredibly quickly on them before really finishing anything. Christ. I worked with those people on something, once, an idea for a sort of Drakengard-inspired game called Murder about insanely powerful, self-destructive people with demonic pacts. For our first draft, they basically got me to do all the work then played Ideas Guy a ton until I just said gently caress it and left to work on it myself. I eventually ended up abandoning the project, but I actually think PBtA could work well for it, with the much more freeform nature of things and the whole 'fail forward/succeed with self-destructive consequences' schtick. Someday I'll give it another stab. Also, never go near the AdEva community. Those guys are just psychos. I've run two AdEva campaigns, both of which were a ton of fun, but they succeeded in spite of the mechanics, not because of, and I spent time hanging out with the community for that game on IRC and they are nuts as hell.
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Nov 26, 2014 05:06
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Helical Nightmares posted:Engine Heart and Chapter Master came from /tg/ and they are pretty good. Well, that's probably because, without clear direction, a creative work being made by many different people will likely be killed by compromise. Hell, even in works with one person it's important to make sure you have clear objectives for the work. I know I make sure to do so before I start a project I never finish.
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Nov 26, 2014 06:20
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I've still got notes around for a Star Wars cinematic unisystem conversion, but it was mostly pretty basic. Like "Lightsabers can be used with getting medieval at -4, or you can buy Wildcard: Lightsabers without a penalty." Also "Dude, no I'm no going to mechanically codify falling to the dark side." as a response to a potential player asking about Dark Side drama points vs. Light side drama points. (Mostly as a reaction to "Every version in every game that had been out at the time was "Collect evil points, get enough, lose character.) unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 11:11
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Princess: The Hopeful.
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Nov 26, 2014 13:05
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What about a system where characters collect evil points, and if they get too many, they become the new villain and their player becomes the new GM. The previous GM has to rejoin the party and be a good guy (either through a new character or a heel-face turn), working towards vanquishing this new foe with the rest of them. At least until someone else gets too many evil points and the whole thing happens again.
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Nov 26, 2014 13:39
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I've just started getting into games that are not D20 based, I was wondering what you guys would recommend in the indie world to check out. Games I already know of: FATE PDQ Mouse Guard Fiasco Dungeon World
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Nov 26, 2014 13:52
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*World games are currently very popular in the indie scene right now. The original is Apocalypse World, and Monster Hearts is generally regarded as the best * World game out there. Dungeon World is also notable and very popular.
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Nov 26, 2014 13:53
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Fuego Fish posted:What about a system where characters collect evil points, and if they get too many, they become the new villain and their player becomes the new GM. The previous GM has to rejoin the party and be a good guy (either through a new character or a heel-face turn), working towards vanquishing this new foe with the rest of them. At least until someone else gets too many evil points and the whole thing happens again. Man based on my experience that would be the biggest incentive for my players to play shining white hat paladins ever. So much GMing anxiety.
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Nov 26, 2014 13:57
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unseenlibrarian posted:Man based on my experience that would be the biggest incentive for my players to play shining white hat paladins ever. So much GMing anxiety.
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Nov 26, 2014 14:08
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bowmore posted:I've just started getting into games that are not D20 based, I was wondering what you guys would recommend in the indie world to check out. I'm rather fond of some of the Cortex+ games. Marvel Heroic is lot of fun for superheroes, and Leverage is a really well done heist game.
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Nov 26, 2014 14:12
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Swords Without Master is my current favorite recommendation for indie RPGs not enough people are playing. It's basically completely brilliant. There's too much to really go into without writing a full-on review, but the way it handles dice, the way each phase of the game is its own slight tweak on the basic flow of the game (passing a pair of dice between the players and narrating according to the dice rolls) to get exactly the kind of story desired at that point in time. The way the game keeps the random element of dice but drifts away from the success/failure dichotomy to be more about the way something is narrated. The Motif cards are a better version of Primetime Adventures' Fan-Mail mechanics because you're not just giving people points for saying cool stuff, you're writing down exactly what you thought was cool about their narration and this later gets reincorporated both organically and mechanically (Things written as motifs are generally seen as signals meaning "let's do more stuff with that" by the other players but they're also essential to how the end-of-session mechanics work) NB: this game works best the less you rely on traditional RPG instincts and more on improv and creative writing instincts. Tulpa fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 15:38
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Miniature market really doesn't want me to have any money.
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Nov 26, 2014 17:22
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Night10194 posted:Also, never go near the AdEva community. Those guys are just psychos. I've run two AdEva campaigns, both of which were a ton of fun, but they succeeded in spite of the mechanics, not because of, and I spent time hanging out with the community for that game on IRC and they are nuts as hell. Everyone I hear talk about AdEva (including the guy who GM'd my game of it) has said this exact same thing; the rules are poo poo and the community is nuts. But something about that system makes for interesting games.
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Nov 26, 2014 18:10
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Last night I was thinking about how similar Monsterhearts is to some of Evangelion's themes; I think you could probably do something amazing with that.
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Nov 26, 2014 18:28
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Jedi425 posted:Everyone I hear talk about AdEva (including the guy who GM'd my game of it) has said this exact same thing; the rules are poo poo and the community is nuts. But something about that system makes for interesting games. It's because with the right group of players, you get an interesting horror character study. As someone said, it's a lot like Monsterhearts; the relationships are every bit (or more) important than the robots and the fighting. The robots are just there to add extra stress and to slowly eat away at the PCs' ego barriers so that they find the boundary between self and others collapsing as time goes. Naturally, AdEva removed most of its Ego Barrier rules in the last 'update' I saw. It's not like one of my pilots Tanging produced one of the best sessions I've ever run with that player, no sir. Oh, and if you get the *wrong* group you end up with creepy  poo poo. The one time I joined a game run by the normal IRC community, I ran smack dab into that and just quit, and the one time I had a player join a game that wasn't a personal friend I knew in person, I had to kick him out for the same.
Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 18:32
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Helical Nightmares posted:Interesting discussion Sionak! I am pretty stoked to talk back and forth on Gumshoe. There's not a lot of discussion about it here or about Cthulhu games in general. quote:Re: Mechanics to inspire player fear/tension I get that and I think it's a good point. In the game I ran, I was a little more shaky about keeping track of Stability vs Sanity and so, even though I love that approach, it didn't really come up. While I like the personalized nature of that kind of sanity effect, especially compared with a random table, it also introduces a break into the action or the tension while you briefly exile the player in question and decide what their new condition is. quote:I’m going to strongly disagree with you there. After six hours of conference lecture, a short snack, five cups of coffee, and your nerves being shot because you have to give a the last talk at 9:30pm; you may not be able to speak coherent English or even drive, but you WILL be able to give that presentation blindfolded, upside-down and drunk. Seen plenty of professors and professionals three sheets to the wind who are able to speak coherently about the nuances of their subject and correct someone across the room for using a model disproven by the recent literature. In a similar fashion, a professional baseball pitcher is going to be able to through a fastball regardless of nerves, sleep deprivation or the inflammation in his everything. Granted the fastball might be poo poo, but it will still be orders of magnitude more effective than a layman, in general. Sure. The following is exactly right, though - it really is mostly physical skills (Athletics, Fleeing, Shooting, etc) - that can have their pool exhausted. Someone with a Rating of 2 in Anthropology and 0 points currently is still world class, but they may not get the cool close-up. inklesspen posted:My understanding is that "my Anthropology skill pool drops to 0" doesn't specifically reflect "I'm worn out and can't remember the cult symbols of Nyarlathotep's servitors" but rather "I've had enough screentime using this skill, time to let something else have the spotlight". Remember, even if you spend all your points from Anthropology, you can still acquire any clue that can be acquired with that skill; you just lose the ability to spend points for special bonuses. One of the things that really helped me get my head around Investigative spends was a panel that Robin Laws and Kenneth Hite did. They pointed out that any player who is spending investigative points is asking for permission to be awesome in that scene - and that you as GM should always respond, "permission granted!" So the zero point spend keeps the plot moving; the one point spend gives them some cool details and/or lead-ins to future clues, and the two-point spend should give them something immediately useful. quote:I fully agree the degree of detail vs obscurity you give as a GM totally should completely depend on how familiar your players are with the Mythos. I think that's one of the tricks of running multiple CoC games, especially with the same group. It is a fun challenge to make the familiar fresh again - Kenneth Hite has a neat series of articles with Pelgrane offering some tweaks to the now-established Mythos creatures. (It's part of the Ken Writes About Stuff series). For instance, making deep ones part dolphin and insuring that your players never look at Flipper quite the same way again.. And by the by, I've since listened to the second Final Revelation RPPR game. That was kind of a strange game in that at least as of the end, they still didn't know the real occult cause or the exact nature of the mythos involvement. I think that's a very cool way to go sometimes too - there's the temptation as keeper to gleefully explain what was really/ going on afterwards, but some stories work better by remaining mysteries. By the by, you first started out talking about Bookhounds of London - I'm not sure if you are aware, but a sort of companion book is coming from Robin Laws, called Dreamhounds of Paris. It's about the surrealist painters discovering the dreamlands - and then discovering that they can actually reshape the dreamlands. It sounds very high concept and awesome to me. edit: I do not get paid for plugging KH and RL's stuff, I swear.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:05
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Quick question regarding Gumshoe--if you're writing up a mystery (or conspiracy, in the case of Night's Black Agents) freehand, how do you confirm that your spine actually makes logical sense and isn't something you'd see in a badly written adventure game? I'm currently writing something up off and on for NBA, and am desperately uncertain as to whether or not what I've got written down regarding the vampires' abilities and conspiracy is actually something traceable without divine intervention.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:15
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Run it by your friendly neighborhood TG forum?
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Nov 26, 2014 21:23
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Running it past other people seems reasonable. Another suggestion from the same panel - this one from Gareth Rider-Hanrahan - was to picture the ideal, simplest way that the players could trace all the clues and figure out the conspiracy. Then, since it's players we're talking about, go back and make sure that there's a bunch of extra connections between the different clue "nodes". So, if the players get fixated on a particular lead it will still eventually lead to the deeper mysteries (or the top of the conspyramid, in the case of NBA). You can also kinda tell from your players when it comes to actually running stuff - if they're lost it tends to be obvious. You can either take a heavier hand with the clues at that point or try to socratically remind them of the leads they have found and see if anything clicks.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:37
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Back around 2000-2001 I spent an inordinate amount of time and effort creating an Avengers RPG- Steed and Peel, mind you, not Marvel. I tried to keep it light but still got bogged down in things like weapon ranges and area of effect damage and concealment modifiers. And also my confused attempt at a unified continuity to encompass the series, the movie (which I still love), and the New Avengers. Got the rules mostly complete but never play tested. When the Buffy RPG came out it made me rethink how games have to be designed. So much extraneous tactical bullshit cut out.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:43
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Out of curiosity, what would people say are the best examples of setting books? Ones that are either light on mechanics or lack them entirely, just with the setting information laid out in an interesting, readable way. Any setting books with premade adventures incorporated as well would be pretty nice. No limits on system or anything, I'll even take agnostic. I know that GURPS books are generally considered to be the cream of the crop, but I was honestly looking for something that was less about a genre and more about a specific world. Most GURPS books tend to be a bit broad in scope, which isn't a bad thing but it's not what I'm looking for here. Please nobody suggest any Forgotten Realms books because I plan on reading this stuff and I'd rather not hate myself for it.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:58
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I know it's not exactly what you're after, but my favorite thing is when RPG books build the mechanics based on the setting; stuff like Apocalypse World's rules, which instill the crazy, weird and uncontrolled setting and feel throughout every bit. I reckon Dungeon World does this masterfully, assuming the setting you're emulating is "playing D&D exactly as your five-year old self wanted it to be" (and I bloody love it!). The Supreme Court fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 23:05
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