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IT BEGINS posted:It's a shame for so many years D&D was really the only TRPG most players had ever played/considered playing. My players have long wanted a less complex system that didn't take hours to resolve simple combats but sort of just assumed that that's how all TRPGs are.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:21
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Quarex posted:I will never forget my first encounter with Kenzer & Co., the year they released Aces & Eights It is pretty fun for what it is, a kind of clunky traditional style rpg with an interesting combat mechanic. How long the novelty holds though is a question I couldn't answer for you, and after that you have a pretty book and a game that tracks a ton of skills and asks you to roll all the different types of dice. If I where to run it again I would just torpedo the setting though, and that is pretty easy to do. E: The confederacy does make fine villain's as well, and all you need to do to use them is to set your game during the Civil War. There is , I suppose a bit of a game in trying to figure out what the Confederacy would have looked like in peace time, but it's all speculation. Hell you can just set the game before the civil war and still deal with slave holders. E2: It seems mostly designed around long term sand box play, but the best part of it, the combat system is pretty deadly, and full character creation is pretty slow. E3: Didn't Deadlands torpedo slavery anyway, basically removing the reason for the confederacy to exist in the first place? remusclaw fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 22:32
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Aces & Eights had one of the nicest looking core books of any RPG I owned, but the "complicated because Hackmaster" char-gen turned most of my play group off and the fact that it was just western meant that the one person who really wanted to play could never build a consensus, so it just sat on my shelf for years. I kind of liked the not an initiative system where you tracked everything in tenths of a second, but the way wounds worked made it way, way to deadly to justify the effort in char-gen. I will admit I really love the shot clock system.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:05
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Simian_Prime posted:It's important to note that of all the hundreds of movies and TV shows made in the Western genre, approx. 0 have been made in a setting where the Confederacy won the war. It's only tabletop RPGs that seem to have this weird fetish for a Southern victory. It's not even relegated to Western RPGs. You get it in other places too like Shadowrun where the balkanization of the US results in a resurgent Confederate States of America for some reason.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:31
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You know, I guess in a situation where there are Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, and magic spells, its not too far fetched that the South would rise again. The south and the Nazis winning seems pretty popular in alternative history fiction, but thankfully never seeped into the visual mediums.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:36
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Kai Tave posted:It's not even relegated to Western RPGs. You get it in other places too like Shadowrun where the balkanization of the US results in a resurgent Confederate States of America for some reason. Watching the news for the past few months, I think if the US government were to lose control for any appreciable amount of time, this would probably actually happen.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:38
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There is also the nation of "Dixie" in Crimson Skies. Then again that is hardly a huge crime compared to "The Nation of Hollywood" and "The Empire Stare" and sillier.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:41
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I appreciated that Six-guns and Sorcery for Castle Falkenstein didn't have the Confederacy survive (And did, in fact, go with "Lincoln lived thanks to healing magic so reconstruction stayed on track") ...It did have the US under the control of a group of evil magical Freemasons, though, so you know, win some, lose some. And yeah, given I live in a state where the legislature actually voted to secede and it passed both houses only to be stopped by a governor's veto, it feels a lot more like "A thing some idiots might try to do at some point" unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 00:42
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Yeah tbh the whole "and then the south secedes again" thing has gotten a tad more relevant in the last few years.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:47
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remusclaw posted:They didn't all die in the war. It's not like assholes stopped being assholes or stopped taking advantage of the people they used to own. Things just got more complicated in the relationship. A lot of people want things simple as hell when doing role playing games, and Nazi's/Confederates/Soviets are the perfect strawmen for you to punch.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:52
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NutritiousSnack posted:A lot of people want things simple as hell when doing role playing games, and Nazi's/Confederates/Soviets are the perfect strawmen for you to punch.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:53
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NutritiousSnack posted:A lot of people want things simple as hell when doing role playing games, and Nazi's/Confederates/Soviets are the perfect strawmen for you to punch. You know what, I am going to disagree with this only because there are far too many people in society still willing to openly sympathize with the confederates for various and sundry reasons. The KKK on the other hand wear masks for a reason, they are basically Imperial Storm-troopers made real when it comes to an acceptable target. E: Sundry means various apparently, meaning I have never seen it used except superfluously. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 00:58
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NutritiousSnack posted:A lot of people want things simple as hell when doing role playing games, and Nazi's/Confederates/Soviets are the perfect strawmen for you to punch. Several westerns managed to have former-Confederate villains without resurrecting the entire confederacy. Its just not needed.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:05
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The CSA retains their cores even when they lose the war on Victoria 2, of course the possibility of the South rising exists.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:14
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FactsAreUseless posted:If only people would give the Nazis the depth of character they deserve. The war of Polish Aggression.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:15
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:What's wrong with the Confederacy existing? As long as it doesn't delve on Lost Cause myths they are pretty much the perfect bad guy government to have the players fight against. Why Not Keep Slavery, Asks Brazilian.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:22
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:The war of Polish Aggression.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:23
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FactsAreUseless posted:If only people would give the Nazis the depth of character they deserve. What if Goebbels was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?
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Aug 10, 2015 01:47
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FactsAreUseless posted:I play Sue Detenland, a private eye with a knack for danger and a briefcase full of Polish nuclear secrets... and London wants me dead! "Poland can into Moon Base filled with WMDs!" - Supreme Dark Lord Jan Kzabyeszkowski
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Aug 10, 2015 01:54
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Basic problem with "large group of unambiguous bad guys" is that it's not often a troupe you see in Westerns. Unless the story takes place before or during the war, any reference to the Confederacy is an afterthought (usually character background). The conflict has shifted from North v. South to East v. West*. Most villains you see in Westerns operate on a local scale - train robbers, a hostile Indian tribe, outlaw on the run from bounty-hunting PC's. The "land of evil" troupe is trying to apply a fantasy solution to a Western game, which is why you end up with Dixie Mordor in all these games. Better overarching antagonists for Westerns: land-robbing railroad and cattle barons, a powerful leader of multiple gangs, the Mexican Empire * and even that is mostly a conflict of resources rather than ideology
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Aug 10, 2015 02:16
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Other adversarial choices, the U.S Government, the posse from the town you just robbed, U.S. Marshals, The Sheriff, The Guatemalan Military, The second fastest gun in the West, the bloke who's brother you killed/got hanged, your former partner who absconded with the cash, the owner of the local saloon, The farmers who feel you did their sister/brother wrong, the preacher who's fleecing the honest folk on fake bibles, the snake oil salesman, the general who got all his men, including your brother killed, the cuss that done stole your girl, etc...
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Aug 10, 2015 02:25
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grassy gnoll posted:Why Not Keep Slavery, Asks Brazilian. Mexicans and Native-Americans are better as evil antagonists than racist plantation owners, answers this thread.
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Aug 10, 2015 02:30
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I think his point was more that there are few or no unambiguous evil bad guys or groups, just ones that have aims that oppose yours. Complexity is your friend and the rare unambiguous evil in a western is often just a single vile human being played by Lee Van Cleef.
remusclaw fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 02:41
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 Here's my cat. She's old and very angry. Presumably mad I never gave her a name.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:15
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Simian_Prime posted:Basic problem with "large group of unambiguous bad guys" is that it's not often a troupe you see in Westerns. Unless the story takes place before or during the war, any reference to the Confederacy is an afterthought (usually character background). The conflict has shifted from North v. South to East v. West*. Most villains you see in Westerns operate on a local scale - train robbers, a hostile Indian tribe, outlaw on the run from bounty-hunting PC's. The "land of evil" troupe is trying to apply a fantasy solution to a Western game, which is why you end up with Dixie Mordor in all these games. I think it's broadly this bolded bit. Western ttgs are inevitably group into "fantasy" which brings along a whole heap of entirely unconnected poo poo. The biggest one is a desire for BIG EPIC STORYLINES, which require a BIG EPIC VILLAIN, which almost always seems to think it needs a BIG EVIL EMPIRE to fight against.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:16
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Trust me, the south is about as close to Mordor as you can get in real life already. Turn back the clock a hundred and fifty years and it's a perfect fit.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:25
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That's not the point. Okay, yeah, let's suppose the Confederacy is in 2nd place behind the Nazis in terms of as close to real-life evil as you can possibly get - that still doesn't mean it's a good fit for the scale and scope of your standard spaghetti western. Maybe when you get to Name Level and you start playing with mass combat rules and the group wants to 
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Aug 10, 2015 03:35
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LongDarkNight posted:
Names have power. As long as your cat's name remains your cat's, it will have all the power it needs.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:48
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This is Octavius, our cat-who-thinks-he's-a-dog. He's an rear end in a top hat. But he's so cute and fuzzy he tricks me every time. 
Somebody fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 03:49
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homerlaw posted:Lemme guess, It's like House of Leaves? That is one influence, yes. Also, Silent Hill, The Shining (Kubrick version), Grave Encounters (underrated found footage horror film) and the Hastur mythos - in particular the Night Floors scenario from Delta Green and other Carcosa influenced scenarios. The Night Clerk AP is a proto version of Ruin: http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2011/10/systems/call-of-cthulhu/call-of-cthulhu-the-night-clerk/
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Aug 10, 2015 03:59
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inklesspen posted:Yes, but this requires improv effort on the part of the GM during the session, and this is unfair to ask of a GM because
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Aug 10, 2015 04:10
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remusclaw posted:I think his point was more that there are few or no unambiguous evil bad guys or groups, just ones that have aims that oppose yours. Complexity is your friend and the rare unambiguous evil in a western is often just a single vile human being played by Lee Van Cleef. Pretty much. It why I think Westerns are suited for sandbox play (with actual sand!). Your players make a posse, you design a territory with a bunch of towns, interesting places (ghost towns, Indian territory, railroad construction sites, abandoned mine, forts, etc.), antagonists. Post bounties and let them go wild. Has there been any sort of OSR hack of Boot Hill, the old TSR Western RPG? Seems like it'd be prime material for this sort of thing. Edit: come to think of it, it wouldn't be too hard to do a Wild West conversion of Unknown Armies Simian_Prime fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 04:32
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Simian_Prime posted:Has there been any sort of OSR hack of Boot Hill, the old TSR Western RPG? Seems like it'd be prime material for this sort of thing. Googling "Boot hill retroclone" pointed me to this
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Aug 10, 2015 04:38
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Aces & Eights was one of two games where I just said gently caress it and sold all my books off. The other was Rifts. It's not a terrible system, and the books are physically gorgeous. As pointed out before, the fictionalized West setting is 100% unnecessary, the shot clock seems awesome at first, The Countdown is confusing, there's too much unironic holdover from Hackmaster (although the random tables for character generation were great if you dig those), and there were optional minigames for everything. The game had these Wario-ware style minigames for all sorts of stuff like horse chases and trials! It seemed like it could be a great game in the right hands, but after a year of failing to sell my friends on it, then acquaintances, then randoms - it was just not to be. (I sincerely hope whoever won my books on eBay is having a better time with it.) Ultimately came down to a) my friends who like Westerns wanted a straight Western and were put off by alt-history "what if" stuff, and b) it was a cumbersome, rules-heavy time investment that came out at a bad time. (IIRC, A&8s launched at a time when rules-light games were cresting in popularity; There were dozens of other new games you could pick up in an afternoon.) I feel like with the right crowd and some familiarity, the whole thing was meant to play like a night of linked Cowboy-themed Cheapass Games. But the relative scarcity of the book and its impregnable bulk got in the way.
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Aug 10, 2015 05:12
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Are there any good superhero RPG systems that goons would recommend? I had the Marvel/Cortex game but never really wrapped my head around it, and I picked up Necessary Evil for Savage Worlds several years back but it generally felt like it was still missing something. I was having a conversation with friends about it today and realized I don't actually know too much about the genre options.
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Aug 10, 2015 06:19
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Gravy Train Robber posted:Are there any good superhero RPG systems that goons would recommend? I had the Marvel/Cortex game but never really wrapped my head around it, and I picked up Necessary Evil for Savage Worlds several years back but it generally felt like it was still missing something. I was having a conversation with friends about it today and realized I don't actually know too much about the genre options. I really like Mutants & Masterminds but if you don't like d20 you may not like it. HERO system exists, but it's one of the crunchiest systems ever and takes for-loving-ever to resolve conflicts. Clockworkjoe has published Base Raiders which is awesome and Fate-based.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:27
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Simian_Prime posted:Has there been any sort of OSR hack of Boot Hill, the old TSR Western RPG? Seems like it'd be prime material for this sort of thing. I don't think it's analogous to Boot Hill, I don't think Boot Hill had orcs in it.
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Aug 10, 2015 08:01
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Siivola posted:I don't think it's analogous to Boot Hill, I don't think Boot Hill had orcs in it.
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Aug 10, 2015 08:09
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Gravy Train Robber posted:Are there any good superhero RPG systems that goons would recommend? I had the Marvel/Cortex game but never really wrapped my head around it, and I picked up Necessary Evil for Savage Worlds several years back but it generally felt like it was still missing something. I was having a conversation with friends about it today and realized I don't actually know too much about the genre options. One of my personal favorites is an OSR game called Hideouts & Hoodlums which uses a modified version of the Sword & Wizardry rules to emulate Superheroes of the Golden Age of Comics, and overall I'd say it does a really good job emulating the genre(especially when you add in all the supplementary material), also it's pretty much the only Superhero RPG to make a class and level system work
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Aug 10, 2015 11:17
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Hey, I just got the weirdest idea and I'd like to see if this gets any traction. There might be a homebrew in this: So, John Harper's Lasers & Feelings is pretty much the best rules right Star Trek RPG out there, and the best thing about it is that it converts to almost any genre where you can easily see two poles that are used to define characters, right? So, you could probably use it for, say, the Cthulhu Mythos as Sanity (traditional investigative techniques) & Sorcery (knowledge of how things work under the rules of the Mythos and how to use it). What if your character's place on this scale wasn't static but it was used more as a sliding scale? What if events in the game could push your character towards the Sorcery end of the scale (as your character experiences the mythos they lose sight of reality and start to lose their mind, which also grants insight into how magic works)? Strangely enough, it produces an effect that emulates the way Call of Cthulhu is traditionally played but also reinforces the narrative of going slowly insane until the only sensible thing to do seems to be to cast that spell you found in one of the old dusty tomes, because as your character slowly loses their mind and moves towards the Sorcery end of the scale traditional investigative techniques become much less reliable and characters need to rely more on supernatural tools. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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