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Since I recntly made some preparations for a Space Pirates ORE game I sadly eventually did not ran, my tips are: 1) Check out the free Out of the Violent Planet setting available for download for free. It's sci-fi and Stolze at his cleverest. 2) There's lots of cool mechanical stuff to scavenge from Wild Talents (or Godlike, I have trouble differentiating these games). Everything relating to guns, powers (reskinned as whatever technobabble gizmo you need) and there's some fighter dogfight rules from some supplement I think were free on drivethrurpg that are literally exactly what you need for space combat, just reskin wings and propellers into whatever you need. Also, since it's all about hitboxes loving you up in different ways, it should be nicely transferrable to Star Trek-like big ship engagements.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:59
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Strange Matter posted:That's actually excellent to know. Can you tell me more about REIGN? I've already ready some of the crazy fluff elements (human shaped continents, lady-only cavalry, ghosts of vengeance by default), but not much about the crunch. Same ORE as Wild Talents, rolling pools of d10s and looking for pairs. No Hard Dice or Wiggle Dice. In Skills (not Stats) you can buy a single Expert Dice or Master Dice. An ED is a dice you set to whatever value you like before you roll - generally to 10, unless you're called shotting. An MD is a Wiggle Die. You can never have more than one ED/MD in a pool for whatever reason and any extras become regular dice if magic or something is letting you have more than one. For the record, I can only think of about two or three circumstances in the entire game where you might have more than one ED or MD in your pool. Armour is changed as discussed above. Weapons have damage ratings like 'Width Killing' 'Width +2 Killing' 'Width +1 Killing, Width Shock' or 'Width Killing, 1 Shock'. Things like that. There's no Willpower or Base Will at all. In their place are Duties, Cravings and Missions, which are righteous causes, base urges and concrete objectives respectively that give you a bonus die each if your current action supports them - and a penalty die each if your current action is against them. Stats are capped at 6. Skills are capped at 5 or 4+ED/MD. Esoteric Disciplines and Martial Techniques are noncombat/combat special skill trees that give you special abilities or bonuses to a particular skill. Notable examples include Svrana Run, which makes you poo poo hot at running, giving you stuff like a +2d bonus on the first run roll in any race or increasing your base speed, and for Martial Techniques there's Winnowing Axe, the weapon style built around killing hundreds of Unworthy Opponents with an axe, letting you get multi-kills, do Morale Attacks and eventually makes Unworthies refuse to attack you. Unworthy Opponents are the mook rules of the game. If you've got a squad of mooks, they roll 1d per person in the squad to a max of 15, can only Attack, Block and Dodge and aren't allowed to keep any set wider than a 3x (although there is an Esoteric Discipline to order them to do so). Unworthies have a Threat Rating from 1-4 which is the minimum height required to kill one in combat. Any successful hit kills a mook, they have no hit boxes. They're a great addition considering the game is meant to be about leadership. A starting character can have an advantage that lets him start the game with like 50 soldiers. Magic spells are split into schools and divided further into spells that require attunement and those that don't - the more powerful ones generally require attunement. Attunement is aligning yourself to a particular spell school, letting you cast all their attuned spells whenever you like and forbidding you from ever casting another school's spells - even the non-attuned ones. The attunement ritual also comes with some sort of physical transformation. Stormtongues grow wings and lose a few hitboxes, Flame Dancers become immune to fire and bleed burning blood, but become infertile. Literally anyone can learn magic, as it is just a Skill. The stat you roll it with depends on the school. Learning a spell generally requires teaching but this is usually widely available. Counterspelling works exactly like a Block or Dodge against an attack, producing Gobble Dice. Again, literally everyone can learn Counterspell. There's also a skill called Eerie that everyone can learn which is 'detect magic: the skill.' There are a few Esoteric Disciplines based around learning cool new tricks for Counterspell and Eerie, like getting directional pings, or Counterspelling for other people. The book specifically calls out that any war wizard's worst nightmare is a guy with an MD in Counterspell and Fight. There are two main combat skills: Fight and Weapon:. Fight is a Body skill and it covers literally all weapon use that doesn't rely on finesse. Brawling, hitting people with Maces, Axes, Swords. It's the jack-of-all-trades skill for those who just want to be dangerous. Weapon is a Coordination skill that qualifies you for use with a single weapon. Weapon: Greatswords, Weapon: Bows, Weapon: Grappling and so on. Apart from the fact that it uses Coordination, the tradeoff in versatility is that having a Weapon skill lets you learn the associated Martial Technique, which is usually well worth it. Companies are the catch-all term for any organisation. Nations, armies, universities, anything. It's generally assumed that the PCs will be at least working for a Company if not actively running one. Companies have stats: Treasure, Might, Influence, Sovereignty and Territory. There are a bunch of rolls that Companies can make, like rolling Sovereignty + Territory to try and get a Treasure bonus by increasing taxes or rolling Might + Territory to go attack someone. Companies can straight up do competitive rolling, from wars, to terrorism to competing for trade contracts or doing opposing propaganda. Damage is done to their stats, temporarily or permanently. It's relatively easy to get your head around, fits on a single A4 cheat sheet and really expands the purview of the game. The setting itself is really cool, with lots of intrigue, wars and things to do. It's clearly been designed for a game to take place rather than just as a masturbatory fiction writing activity. You could set a campaign pretty much anywhere and get a good game out of it. I think that's all the important things. I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. In general, it's a much better put together game than Wild Talents and is far less breakable.
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Dec 1, 2014 15:57
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Doodmons posted:I think that's all the important things. I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. In general, it's a much better put together game than Wild Talents and is far less breakable. The end product that I'm aiming for is sort of a marraige between WT and what you're describing with REIGN. I want to surgically alter the Archetype and Miracles system from WT into what I'm tentatively calling Marvels, which are skills and equipment born from advanced science and physical training and are built like Miracles but function as Skills, where their pool is the total of the Marvel plus the Stat that they are assigned to. I also think that the Company rules from REIGN would work extremely well in allowing the players to represent the Crew of a starship.
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Dec 1, 2014 16:43
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Though it's not Stolze-penned, more ORE adaptations need to steal how skills work from Kerberos Club.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:50
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unseenlibrarian posted:Though it's not Stolze-penned, more ORE adaptations need to steal how skills work from Kerberos Club. I want to absorb as much as I can about different ways that ORE can work.
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Dec 1, 2014 19:04
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Basically, you start with the standard Wild Talents skills, of fairly narrow utility. (Like Rifles and Pistols being different skills, etc.) Except you can spend extra points to make them broad- so instead you just have a "Guns" skill. You can also make them Flexible, so you can use different stats with them for different applications; with a Flexible, Broad Guns skill you can evaluate the quality of guns with one stat/guns combo, repair them with another, etc. You can also make them social, which means you have appropriate contacts for someone who is a guns enthusiast. So you can either take the simple basic skills or turn them into something special, and have skills of different depth on one character.
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Dec 1, 2014 19:35
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I quite liked Wild Talents optional careers-as-skills rules. I think for something like 15 points per die you could buy a really broad skill like Police Officer or Lawyer and roll it for anything related to what that career would be able to do. I also think you can buy Money as a skill and roll it to acquire things. HD and WD in Money represent being really rich. It was a bit more abstract Fate Aspect style way of doing things. I've never actually used it but it would be cool to try it out.
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Dec 2, 2014 00:02
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SageNytell posted:As Reign is under discussion, Arc Dream is running a Cyber Monday sale and the Reign Enchiridion is currently on sale for $5! Since a friend of mine skipped the link at first thinking this was for PDFs: These are all physical books, all on sale for $5.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:24
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Idran posted:Since a friend of mine skipped the link at first thinking this was for PDFs: These are all physical books, all on sale for $5. It's both, physical book shipped plus PDF right away.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:37
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enigma105 posted:It's both, physical book shipped plus PDF right away. They actually aren't doing PDFs, due to the reduced cost.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:44
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If it weren't for the international shipping rates I would be all over this. 
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Dec 2, 2014 03:56
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SageNytell posted:As Reign is under discussion, Arc Dream is running a Cyber Monday sale and the Reign Enchiridion is currently on sale for $5! BUY PROGENITOR
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Dec 2, 2014 04:37
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What's the premise of Progenitor?
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Dec 2, 2014 05:14
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Verr posted:What's the premise of Progenitor? What if a 1950s housewife randomly got the power of Doctor Manhattan? And that anyone she came into contact with had a chance of getting a small portion of that power. And on and on. Super powered LBJ, multiple hyper-intelligent people creating warring infectious memes and antidotes for them, and a real rear end in a top hat gets the power to be High All The Time with 4HD. The theme is ideas and things that self-replicate and spread, and how that plays out in changing a fairly normal 1950s alt history into a totally surreal alt-2000s. There's a huge lineage of who got powers from who. Powers tend to spread by people having powers used on them, which creates a lot of revenge scenarios. There's lots of really good character concepts and powers, and all of the alt-history ties together really well.
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Dec 2, 2014 05:24
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It's also a world where metahumans actually have an affect on the world in general. It's not "modern day as it is now despite there being super-geniuses and alien gods every five feet"; there are metas who create new continents, religions, nations, technologies, and at least two extinction-level events. e: it also has a full timeline from 1968 to 2000, so you can set a campaign whenever you want. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 05:56
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's also a world where metahumans actually have an affect on the world in general. It's not "modern day as it is now despite there being super-geniuses and alien gods every five feet"; there are metas who create new continents, religions, nations, technologies, and at least two extinction-level events. Yeah you're right it's 1968. I dunno why I thought 50s.
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Dec 2, 2014 06:53
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Beyond the default setting, which is pretty great, Progenitor also discusses how people with superpowers might affect the world along multiple axes and provides a framework for doing so that you can slot into other campaigns as you like. Honestly though a lot of Arc Dream's stuff is pretty great. You should also consider buying Monsters & Other Childish Things and the Kerberos Club.
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Dec 2, 2014 06:56
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Sounds very rad! Added to the cart.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:21
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TurninTrix posted:If it weren't for the international shipping rates I would be all over this. 75$ to ship the Wild Talents books to Canada. I guess I own too many games I'll never play anyways.
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Dec 2, 2014 08:32
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Progenitor's month-by-month detailed timeline of 30 years of supers loving up the world, combined with easy to follow character bios letting you see what effects who, when, where gives rise to a campaign idea that I can only assume was completely intended: Time Travel. In the 2000s, the Unsided invasion is going absolutely terrible for humanity when the last 2nd generation who has been missing this whole time - because he is a time traveller - contacts the PCs with an ambitious idea. Travel extensively throughout the last 30 years of superhero history, changing things to make the world better prepared to fight off extradimensional alien invaders. You hand them a copy of Progenitor and say "The entire timeline chapter and all the non-stats character bios are in a folder IC that I am handing to you". They have to plan out what they want to change and when, go there and try to fix the course of human history without Butterfly Effecting everything. They probably only have one attempt to fix any one thing, because once they've been there once it's almost certainly too dangerous to go there again unless you want to run into yourselves. Added complications include Hyperbrains throughout history working out what's going on and trying to interfere, the Unsided themselves having time travel (I think the book even suggests that they probably do) and jumping through time to stop you, the sheer difficulty in trying to change human history when there's generally a good reason things panned out the way they did and the good old law of unintended consequences. Things a party would probably want to fix: - Stop Jason Weeks from dying - Prevent the Metapocalypse (this one's actually pretty easy since you'd just need to kill Metal Virus - the real problem is the theory that Weeks is behind it) - Prevent Andrew Colt's suicide - Ensure Jedgar and Martin Luther King survive - Come to some sort of arrangement with ProgHarm The best thing about this scenario is that because of the power tiers the players can't just go "Right, we'll go back in time and just kill Zipperneck to stop all of that bad poo poo from happening" and then you show them the list of decent, valuable supers who are directly descended from Zipperneck. The metrics rules and the timeline would make this kind of campaign a cinch to run, as it would be extremely easy to plot changes. In fact, the book is so perfect for a time travel campaign I can seriously only assume that Stolze had this in mind. It gives you everything you would need - and that's quite a lot. The missing 2nd gen and the extradimensional Unsided make a great catalyst.
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Dec 2, 2014 14:01
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Doodmons posted:- Prevent the Metapocalypse (this one's actually pretty easy since you'd just need to kill Metal Virus - the real problem is the theory that Weeks is behind it) Wait, what? I missed that, is that in the book? e: found it. That's an interesting idea, but I don't know if it tracks; Week doesn't come across as a "kill billions for the sake of future billions" type. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 19:02
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Evil Mastermind posted:Wait, what? I missed that, is that in the book? I guess it would depend on what Colour you wanted the setting to be. Personally, I feel like with his powerset and habits he definitely would have known it was coming and either he let it slide for the sake of the human race or it was the worst mistake of his life - or someone else (Nguyet Cam maybe) was covering for Metal Virus.
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Dec 3, 2014 14:11
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Yeah, that's something I could see Cam doing more than Weeks.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:57
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I'm just going to say that this conversation about the backstory is what pushed me over the line of ordering Edit: Durr, brain work good. Echophonic fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 21:59
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Echophonic posted:I'm just going to say that this conversation about the backstory is what pushed me over the line of ordering Godlike yesterday. Uh, we're talking about Progenitor, not Godlike...
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Dec 3, 2014 22:00
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Evil Mastermind posted:Uh, we're talking about Progenitor, not Godlike... I'm an idiot, I meant Progenitor. Ended up grabbing it, Wild Talents, and Grim War or whatever the name of it is.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:50
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Greg Stolze is tweeting about how Unknown Armies 3 is going to be three 74k word books and I could not be happier about that. Hopefully they're structured so I can toss one of them at my players and keep a bunch of info in the other two to myself.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:55
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I wonder if it's going to keep the Street/Global/Cosmic split of the 2nd edition corebook, or split it up differently. I guess UA 2e could also claim to have three books of core, Postmodern Magic (adepts and stuff) and Statosphere (avatars and stuff).
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Dec 5, 2014 03:11
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I'd be surprised if it wasn't a street/global/cosmic split. Although that feels like you'd have a lot of repeated content in terms of the base rules.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:29
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Nah, it's an Occultist's Handbook, a Fucker-upper's Guide, and a Man Is The Only Real Monster Manual.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:59
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Mimir posted:Nah, it's an Occultist's Handbook, a Fucker-upper's Guide, and a Man Is The Only Real Monster Manual.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:14
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a 76k word brochure called "Buy A Gun. Shoot Magicians With Your Gun."
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Dec 5, 2014 13:13
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd be surprised if it wasn't a street/global/cosmic split. Although that feels like you'd have a lot of repeated content in terms of the base rules. I think they'll be a "core game and systems" book, an a "world setting and magick" book, and a "tons of awesome crazy stuff" book.
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Dec 6, 2014 20:10
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Doodmons posted:Progenitor's month-by-month detailed timeline of 30 years of supers loving up the world, combined with easy to follow character bios letting you see what effects who, when, where gives rise to a campaign idea that I can only assume was completely intended: Time Travel. In the 2000s, the Unsided invasion is going absolutely terrible for humanity when the last 2nd generation who has been missing this whole time - because he is a time traveller - contacts the PCs with an ambitious idea. Travel extensively throughout the last 30 years of superhero history, changing things to make the world better prepared to fight off extradimensional alien invaders. I like this a lot, the problem I have with Progenitor is the same problem I had when approaching all the cWoD Vampire books: all the plot is very interesting but also pretty stultifying in-game, and the big NPCs are not only more powerful and competent but also usually more interesting than the PCs. You get to keep the whole story as-is but flip the script on the whole thing.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:28
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Tezzor posted:I like this a lot, the problem I have with Progenitor is the same problem I had when approaching all the cWoD Vampire books: all the plot is very interesting but also pretty stultifying in-game, and the big NPCs are not only more powerful and competent but also usually more interesting than the PCs. You get to keep the whole story as-is but flip the script on the whole thing. I think it's a fine concept if you're fine with the PCs not being the highest tier folks around. Even then, creative application of low level powers is the soup of the day for that game. All of the higher tier people are rarer and rarer, while lower tier people become somewhat common. And just because you're up against lower tier folks doesn't mean encounters have to be boring. Henry Hatchet, a 50 pointer who just has a single WD in a bunch of skills, and 1+1WD in Knife and Gun is set up to be a real hassle to deal with. Especially once he joins the CIA.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:45
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Writing for UA 3e is apparently done.
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Dec 9, 2014 12:45
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Tezzor posted:I like this a lot, the problem I have with Progenitor is the same problem I had when approaching all the cWoD Vampire books: all the plot is very interesting but also pretty stultifying in-game, and the big NPCs are not only more powerful and competent but also usually more interesting than the PCs. You get to keep the whole story as-is but flip the script on the whole thing. I completely agree, but the metagame with the people I play with is 'how much minmaxing can we do within the points limit to utterly destroy people many tiers above us?' which is a very different dynamic. A 50 point Wild Talents character can destroy the universe, properly specced.
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Dec 9, 2014 13:52
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Doodmons posted:I completely agree, but the metagame with the people I play with is 'how much minmaxing can we do within the points limit to utterly destroy people many tiers above us?' which is a very different dynamic. A 50 point Wild Talents character can destroy the universe, properly specced. How's that?
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Dec 9, 2014 21:15
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Greg posted a tweet about the contents of the UA3 books earlier: Book1 = Main rules, avatar stuff, some unnatural stuff Book2 = Cult rules (kinda), adept stuff, more unnatural stuff Book3 = More.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:07
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3 books? Ugh, I thought everyone but D&D had kicked that poo poo, seriously puts me off buying in.
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Dec 14, 2014 02:16
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