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quote:Stuff about trading in RPGs. To be honest I could see something like this being interesting if the game was actually properly built around it rather than just jamming it into a grogged up game of D&D.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 01:25 |
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# ? May 24, 2024 14:10 |
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All this talk about trading in RPGs reminds me of the Storm of Zehir NWN2 campaign, which I thought had a neat premise in the whole 'travel the continent, trade goods, establish outposts and caravans' mechanic. I'd enjoy playing a D&D campaign where we put our loot towards building a castle or town or trade empire or anything besides 'get loot to buy gear to get more loot'. It still had dungeons and you would go solving problems in the region just like a normal adventuring party, you just also were putting what you got towards long term stuff. I think this is part of why I really want to like Exalted - it has a big focus on 'empire building' and building powerbases and stuff. I like that aspect of RPGs more than 'go kill things because problems due to those things'. Too bad Exalted never goes right.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 01:38 |
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Isn't building a giant-rear end castle basically the endgame for original D&D?
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 01:42 |
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Birthright basically did this--that is, building/running a kingdom and worrying about trade and resources and the like. It also had a GODDAMN VAMPIRE as a ruler of a kingdom, so you could totally get your not-Castlevania on.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 01:45 |
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KittyEmpress posted:All this talk about trading in RPGs reminds me of the Storm of Zehir NWN2 campaign, which I thought had a neat premise in the whole 'travel the continent, trade goods, establish outposts and caravans' mechanic. I'd enjoy playing a D&D campaign where we put our loot towards building a castle or town or trade empire or anything besides 'get loot to buy gear to get more loot'. It still had dungeons and you would go solving problems in the region just like a normal adventuring party, you just also were putting what you got towards long term stuff. If you haven't, you should give Reign a try.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 01:48 |
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KittyEmpress posted:All this talk about trading in RPGs reminds me of the Storm of Zehir NWN2 campaign, which I thought had a neat premise in the whole 'travel the continent, trade goods, establish outposts and caravans' mechanic. I'd enjoy playing a D&D campaign where we put our loot towards building a castle or town or trade empire or anything besides 'get loot to buy gear to get more loot'. It still had dungeons and you would go solving problems in the region just like a normal adventuring party, you just also were putting what you got towards long term stuff. I remember hearing people wax lyrical about how old school D&D was supposed to have the fighter graduate to being a landed lord with solders and stuff to balance out the wizard's crazy high level spells. Made me want a game where you start at that point, rather than running through nine levels of murderhobo dungeons to get there.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 02:20 |
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Rockopolis posted:Isn't building a giant-rear end castle basically the endgame for original D&D? Yes, but it wasn't the endgame in the sense of that being the end of your character. There were like 20+ levels after that point to slog through.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 02:25 |
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WordMercenary posted:I remember hearing people wax lyrical about how old school D&D was supposed to have the fighter graduate to being a landed lord with solders and stuff to balance out the wizard's crazy high level spells. Made me want a game where you start at that point, rather than running through nine levels of murderhobo dungeons to get there. I've had people make this argument before, and it always seems to come from the same people who think that the fighter shouldn't be capable of leading anyone because he doesn't have high charisma. People who think that the Fighter should get to become a lord and have all the benefits of that to level the playing field inevitably want to be like 'well her ability scores don't support it so she can't actually', oh but look their sorcerer has 26 charisma so everyone will follow them so they have spells and minions obviously. I'd never heard of Birthright or Reign before.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 02:41 |
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KittyEmpress posted:I've had people make this argument before, and it always seems to come from the same people who think that the fighter shouldn't be capable of leading anyone because he doesn't have high charisma. People who think that the Fighter should get to become a lord and have all the benefits of that to level the playing field inevitably want to be like 'well her ability scores don't support it so she can't actually', oh but look their sorcerer has 26 charisma so everyone will follow them so they have spells and minions obviously. quote:I'd never heard of Birthright or Reign before.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 02:48 |
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Reign is kind of an automatic namedrop for "I want to do a fantasy game that's about building and running a guild/nation/whatever" but the sad fact is there just aren't that many other games out there which focus on that beyond Birthright (long out of print) and, what, maybe Adventurer, Conqueror, King which has its own issues, so Reign it is. It helps that it's actually a pretty good game.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 02:58 |
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is meikyuu kingdom a kingdom builder?
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:01 |
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Is Meikyuu Kingdom ever getting a finalized English translation?
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:04 |
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Well, it is a game where you get together to make you a kingdom.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:05 |
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Tollymain posted:is meikyuu kingdom a kingdom builder? Kai Tave posted:Is Meikyuu Kingdom ever getting a finalized English translation?
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:14 |
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Libertad! posted:A lot of those hardcore simulationist gamers probably don't have Asperger's, but rather a boner for making a living, breathing campaign by doing things all the wrong way. Not to mention the overall nerd obsession with "realism" which is a misuse of the phrase "consistent." Thank you for saying that. As someone who has a family member with autism, I really get tired of people using the term for a form of autism as a pejorative. Kai Tave posted:Is Meikyuu Kingdom ever getting a finalized English translation?
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:27 |
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That's good to hear. I honestly keep forgetting that Meikyuu Kingdom is a thing, hopefully they can get the translation finished soon so we can add another game to the fantasy kingdom-building pile.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:32 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yes, but it wasn't the endgame in the sense of that being the end of your character. There were like 20+ levels after that point to slog through. Oh, okay, I guess I'm used to that being abstracted away or not really playable, but I guess back then they could always play Chainmail. It's weird to think of today's grog being yesteryear's cutting edge, super anti-grog.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:34 |
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It really is insane to think about the final antecedents of Dungeons & Dragons, and how in a lot of ways things like Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign pretty much were rules-light free-form storygames complete with important prop usage (I mean, poo poo, they had a newsletter). Then Gary Gygax was like "you know it would be cool if anyone but you actually knew HOW to run this game" and codified things. And for as much as his games did not reflect it, he did seem pretty ardently in favor of his own proclamation that if you do not like a rule you should just toss it or make a new one. HE WAS THE MOST CHILLAX GAMING BRO sometimes
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:41 |
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Covok posted:Thank you for saying that. As someone who has a family member with autism, I really get tired of people using the term for a form of autism as a pejorative. as a real sperg i find i don't have the energy or focus to do simulationistic play. i can't say i speak for an entire demographic, of course, but the word doesn't seem to really fit the usage very well at all
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 03:58 |
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Tollymain posted:as a real sperg i find i don't have the energy or focus to do simulationistic play. i can't say i speak for an entire demographic, of course, but the word doesn't seem to really fit the usage very well at all Agreed. If I'm playing a game whee rules = physics, let me make sure that physics = narrative physics or I probably don't wanna bother with it any more without some compelling thing that probably has nothing to do with the game itself. I know ACKS was recently mentioned in this thread, and as a "sperg" I actually find the accounting portion of that game hideous. If you really get off on making charts to describe how much money it takes to raise a fictional army and then maintain it, along with other such things, I suppose it's right on the money. I'd rather take other parts of that game for use if I'm gonna do something with it. Probably other games out there in a similar boat. Incidentally, an alternative to ACKS for domain play in that style of game is An Echo, Resounding by Sine Nomine. It's basically a paradigmatically different approach to doing more or less the same thing with similar types of games.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 06:29 |
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Another issue with ACKS is the whole Escapist thing, admittedly tangential to its qualities as a game but there you go.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 06:33 |
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Kai Tave posted:Another issue with ACKS is the whole Escapist thing, admittedly tangential to its qualities as a game but there you go. I wasn't thinking or talking about anything outside of the game itself. But yeah, if you think someone is terrible and you don't want to give them money because of that, then don't. Give money to Sine Nomine instead by getting AER if you like old school D&D and domain play. No need to feel guilty on either count that way. My interaction with Tavis went really well. He helped me out when I had some mix-ups with my order of the two core books - great customer service there. I think there's good stuff in the game but there's also BAD stuff, like Accounting: the RPG. I'd already spent the money for those books before the Escapist thing ever happened, though.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 06:52 |
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Gasperkun posted:I wasn't thinking or talking about anything outside of the game itself. But yeah, if you think someone is terrible and you don't want to give them money because of that, then don't. Give money to Sine Nomine instead by getting AER if you like old school D&D and domain play. No need to feel guilty on either count that way. Oh sure, I wasn't trying to make it out like it was a knock against you or anything. So what's the deal with An Echo, Resounding then? This is, I think, the second time I've seen someone bring it up here. It doesn't look like it's a self-contained game, more of a sourcebook. fake edit; oh, it's by the Scarlet Heroes guys, okay.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 07:01 |
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Kai Tave posted:Stuff Cool. Didn't think you were necessarily arguing against me or my statement. I don't have my own copy of it but as far as I understand it, An Echo, Resounding basically uses the tags system Sine Nomine has developed (though their implementation differs by genre) and uses them to structure an abstract system for domain play. I've heard people compare the tags system to Fronts from Dungeon World in at least a few places. But yeah, it's not intended as its own game. It's ostensibly written for Labyrinth Lord but that doesn't mean necessarily anything because the great thing about the Sine Nomine games is this: one of the design goals is to give you some tools for game play that work even if you aren't into OSR. Gasperkun fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Dec 16, 2014 |
# ? Dec 16, 2014 07:35 |
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Tollymain posted:as a real sperg i find i don't have the energy or focus to do simulationistic play. i can't say i speak for an entire demographic, of course, but the word doesn't seem to really fit the usage very well at all As a confirmed sperg i find simulationism is a sometimes paradigm
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 09:44 |
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I have a real temptaion to run a simulationist game now. On the forums, where the tables are made up by goons..... - No PC's, just me rolling dozens of stupid made up tables. The readers would affect the simulation by altering the tables. adding new ones as they see the need. It would be glorious chaos.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 10:46 |
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That sounds hilarious, do it! Character creation alone will bring out some total gems.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 11:17 |
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That does sound pretty good. I'm a sucker for games which modify their own rules in play.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 11:54 |
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Covok posted:Thank you for saying that. As someone who has a family member with autism, I really get tired of people using the term for a form of autism as a pejorative. I will also thank you, Libertad, for the same reason. While a mercantile campaign that arose from one long string of "DM May I?" because the players have to cajole play out of the DM sounds like the worst, I don't think All About the GPs, Baby is the worst D&D campaign ever. Instead of bean counting, run a big campaign about owning a caravan or being local mobsters who corner the market on grain, while threatening local farmers for protection all "Would be a shame if anything happened to your wheat... think of the poor kids who'd go to bed starving without their bread!" Oh, and I think a table would be useful for random events if you're running a caravan campaign. A caravan seems like a really good candidate for having random poo poo to happen to the PCs and not having it be ultra dull. Like maybe your wagon wheel breaks which leads lizard men disguised as bushes to ambush. You come across a talking pig who offers his accounting services. Things like that. I don't see it as particularly simulationist.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 12:03 |
I watched the Jim Jarmusch vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive, and though I loved it some buried part of my brain insisted that the beauty-obsessed hipster vampires it was about were Toreador from oWoD. Except they can only imitate, not create, unlike the characters in the film.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 14:08 |
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Just think, we could have had a Neuromancer RPG if only the designers had been able to come up with a quasi-element plane of krill and poo poo. Gibson is a bad example because he's at the far end of writing re: giving no shits about researching anything, which is fine when you're writing a book (usually, anyway, Gibson has written some of the most influential sci-fi of our time and some awfully incoherent garbage as well), but doesn't work as well when you have five people at a table doing a shared reality. I don't think simulation is a problem, it's a tool. The main issue is just jerks that champion simulationism as a virtue. But it's not a virtue any more than, say, improvisation. It's just a means of handling plots and settings. It can be done well and if you can juggle what's needed to do that kind of game, more power to you. I think where the core issue regarding simulationism and its worship comes from The Dungeon, and how D&D trains people to build The Dungeon, which is just a way to build an environment down to each 5' x 5' square, and the natural outgrowth of that (as we see from Judges' Guild material) is to build The City and The Wilds, and once you've put that much crazy work in, it's easy to turn around and sneer at somebody who doesn't know what store happens to be at their corner of Wyvern Way and MacAllister Lane. But knowing that kind of detail is a tool, not the actual goal (which is just enjoyment of the game), and it's easy to confuse the two. Also nerds just love putting things in boxes. Putting things is boxes satisfies some raw nerd urge, and RPGs are full of putting things in boxes (classes, skill groups, magic schools, whatever), so it feels like a natural outgrowth to start putting everything in a box. I don't even know why it's satisfying, maybe it's just interesting to impose order on things. I just know bullet points are exciting and I have no drat idea why.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 15:04 |
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Kai Tave posted:Reign is kind of an automatic namedrop for "I want to do a fantasy game that's about building and running a guild/nation/whatever" but the sad fact is there just aren't that many other games out there which focus on that beyond Birthright (long out of print) and, what, maybe Adventurer, Conqueror, King which has its own issues, so Reign it is. It helps that it's actually a pretty good game. Birthright is available via dndclassics now.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 15:11 |
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ravenkult posted:My pet peeve in that Werewolf game was how the GM just gave the benefit of the doubt (for lack of a better word) to every NPC he had created. Like we'd be low on everything, from weapons or ammo to magical ''juice'' to fuel our powers (I've already forgotten the terms for this in Werewolf) and we'd have to fight 2 vs 6 and they'd have military grade equipment and be fully charged, never wounded, never caught by surprise. Meanwhile our team was half dead, carried pistols (we couldn't buy anything better because of REALISM). It's another reason why Wizards are better than Fighters. The argument of "Oh, well it's okay that the Wizard is stronger than the Fighter in the short term because the Wizard slowly runs out of resources as the adventuring day progresses while the Fighter doesn't" doesn't hold much water when you realize that class abilities designed to be short bursts of power (i.e. spells) are going to be used endlessly against the Fighter over and over and over.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 15:33 |
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The Supreme Court posted:That sounds hilarious, do it! Character creation alone will bring out some total gems. potatocubed posted:That does sound pretty good. I'm a sucker for games which modify their own rules in play. Here we go then To train wreck or glory!
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 16:03 |
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Kai Tave posted:Another issue with ACKS is the whole Escapist thing, admittedly tangential to its qualities as a game but there you go. Could you explain this?
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 16:42 |
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ethics in tabletop games journalism
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 16:45 |
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Tollymain posted:ethics in tabletop games journalism
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 16:54 |
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Tollymain posted:ethics in tabletop games journalism That about sums it up. In more detail, as far as I know about it: the guy behind the Escapist, who is also the rules guru for ACKS, has financially supported the Gor RPG, if not other projects by Grimachu (I don't choose you). I believe the deal was the Escapist featured a piece about Gor and then didn't disclose that the dude behind it was also funding Gor: the RPG, so conflict of interest compounded with whatever judgments you make about Grim or Gor as a property, RPG, or whatever else. Someone who knows the situation in more detail can speak up if I'm wrong, since it's the sort of thing I learn enough about to know I don't want to delve deeper. Also, a bit belated, but I didn't shoot a thanks to Libertad (who is a cool dude from what I have seen of his postings here and elsewhere) for sticking up for spergs.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 17:01 |
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No one would've really given a poo poo (because backing a crowdfunding thing isn't that big of a deal really), but GGers were making a big deal about a journalist writing about someone while pledging to their Patreon, yet silent about this thing because I don't know shut up.
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 18:00 |
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# ? May 24, 2024 14:10 |
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actually the thing i'm referring to involves ACKS itself
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# ? Dec 16, 2014 18:05 |