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If I remember right, 13th Age does a little bit of this automation. The monsters have specific tactics they only use if they roll a certain amount and certain abilities that they can only use every other turn or whatnot. They're like very simple scripts so the GM has to less tactical thinking on the fly, but they also let perceptive players see the patterns. I haven't run a ton of the game, but it was really fun when teaching it to say, "the ogre is winding up for another big swing - do you think you can take it out before it lands?" and seeing everyone scramble to do so. I know it's more gamey and less ~immersive~ than some people like to play, but I felt it worked well with the system. I do think that most games have so much information present in combats - mostly in the form of PC abilities - that the monster tells have to pretty obvious, especially at first. Also in the context of 13th Age, I believe other monsters can only do things on specific levels of the Escalation Die or once it hits a certain number. This also adds a bit more strategy and pacing into the fights.
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Oct 25, 2015 21:17
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While that's true, the main thing 13a is missing is probably the most important thing in this - the ability for players to adapt and react to those tells. Knowing the baddie is going to use a specific powerful move doesn't help if they don't have the tools to stop or dodge it in some way.
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Oct 25, 2015 21:44
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Maxwell Lord posted:After playing a bunch of Symphony of the Night (and less successfully, Dark Souls) I've started thinking of if you could make an RPG with that kind of "difficulty"- where if you're getting hit by the enemy, it's not because of a randomizer, but because you made a mistake. If the whole party gets killed, it's not "campaign over" but "okay let's try that again using what we've learned." You are almost exactly describing the combat of the board game Mage Knight. Google it or look it up in the boardgame megathread to get an idea of how it works.
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Oct 25, 2015 22:32
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RIP grognards.txt
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Oct 26, 2015 09:02
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So generic RPGs... what kind of gameplay are each of them best at, do you all think?Simian_Prime posted:RIP grognards.txt I just found the most amazing thing, too! Some of the Weird Grog I like rather than the typical "lol 3.x is good!!!" crap. But it clocked in at over 100k characters, and I was trying to figure out how to pare it down when the thread got nuked. Oh well.
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Oct 26, 2015 09:26
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Lightning Lord posted:I just found the most amazing thing, too! Some of the Weird Grog I like rather than the typical "lol 3.x is good!!!" crap. But it clocked in at over 100k characters, and I was trying to figure out how to pare it down when the thread got nuked. Oh well. Sounds like I did you and the thread a favour.
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Oct 26, 2015 10:24
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Lightning Lord posted:So generic RPGs... what kind of gameplay are each of them best at, do you all think? Badly, dohoho. But I've never seen a generic system that's avoided a great deal of sameyness. Eg in D&D 4e, if I pick powers for my fighter that emphasize damage, I am saying that he fights with brutal, violent attacks. Positioning and movement, that he fights with lots of footwork and feints. Stance powers indicate a more esoteric approach to martial arts. Having positioning at-wills and encounters and high-damage dailies suggests someone who wears enemies down before delivering the killing blow, or someone who launches an initial bumrush before following through with clever strikes, depending on when I employ them. Reliable powers suggest a conservative style. Push powers suggest powerful blows, pull powers entangling attacks. This is all just for one class and only considering a subset of the combat system. Generic stuff just doesn't come close.
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Oct 26, 2015 11:38
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Well, actually, Strike is pretty generic, and does quite a bit of that stuff. So that's one example I'm familiar with of "generic done right".
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Oct 26, 2015 11:49
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Lightning Lord posted:So generic RPGs... what kind of gameplay are each of them best at, do you all think? The theme and the feel that your game wants to shoot for is ideally supported by the rules. The value of a generic RPG is if, with the use of a few key rules additions here and there, you can evoke that theme and feel without having to resort to using (and thereby relearning) an entirely new system altogether. Basic Roleplaying: add in the Sanity mechanic and it's CoC. Add in magic and it's fantasy. Add in mutations and it's post-apocalypse. GURPS does the same thing, albeit with more extensive rules modifications involved. GUMSHOE does something similar with a shift in what investigative skills are available and what they can do/accomplish, although in this case GUMSHOE's generic-ness is spread out over multiple separate games. But you can only push this so far, since the particular way that BRP does combat and damage and health will create a certain level of lethality regardless of where and what and how you're playing, which will still make it unsuitable in some cases. You can use GURPS to do modern-day shootouts, but tracking all of the effects and modifiers necessary to pull off the "correct" amount of survivability is going to demand a certain level of work that you might not want to do. I suppose the strength of a generic system is how many different genres it can represent well with a minimal amount of additional "rules chrome".
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Oct 26, 2015 11:55
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Simian_Prime posted:RIP grognards.txt Admittedly, there's only so much handwringing about people demonizing 4e that the world needs.
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Oct 26, 2015 12:38
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I still don't know what is to grok a cheese and coin grog.
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Oct 26, 2015 12:56
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Lightning Lord posted:So generic RPGs... what kind of gameplay are each of them best at, do you all think? I can only speak for GURPS and I am a big fan of the game, so keep that in mind in reading this. Most people recommend GURPS as a crunch-heavy combat simulator, usually for either low-magic sword and sorcery campaigns (and occasionally joke that it does D&D better than D&D does) or their modern equivalent. This is technically a good recommendation, especially since there are a variety of skills that allow you to fight the way you prefer to fight without penalizing you too much, according to GURPS Martial Arts, but I feel that it's somewhat limiting. GURPS allows you, if you want to, to have every detail of your character have mechanical weight. This means that it could theoretically be good for a stictly social or pastoral campaign, but frankly I have not tested this theory and can't swear by it. I should also mention that GURPS supplements are great even if you just want info on a genre or historical period that you want to use in another game and have impressive bibliographies.
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Oct 26, 2015 13:02
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Lightning Lord posted:So generic RPGs... what kind of gameplay are each of them best at, do you all think? I'm partial to Fate for most of the kinds of games I like to run. If its the kind of game where I want the combat to be fast and loose, or if I'm looking for pulpy action-adventure I go with Fate. FAE is even better if you're looking to just run something on the fly. Strike is beginning to look more and more like the system I'd want to use for tactical combat stuff. I started playing RPGs with D&D 4E, and Strike looks like it could take that same minis-and-grid style and apply it to most any genre since reskinning is built into the game. The ability to pretty much make up your own skills helps too (which is thing my players came to love in 13th Age). But if you want a system that can do anything there's always GURPS. The great part about GURPS is that there's a book for drat near every genre and any number of optional systems you can bolt on to give it the feel you're looking for. The bad thing about GURPS is that to play it you would first have to read a GURPS book.
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Oct 26, 2015 13:26
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I still don't know what is to grok a cheese and coin grog.
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Oct 26, 2015 14:04
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FactsAreUseless posted:Very carefully! Nice try but that doesn't make any semantic sense. Take him away, boys.
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Oct 26, 2015 14:23
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Serf posted:The bad thing about GURPS is that to play it you would first have to read a GURPS book. What do you mean by that? GURPS books seem pretty well written to me.
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Oct 26, 2015 14:39
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Simian_Prime posted:RIP grognards.txt Again?
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Oct 26, 2015 14:46
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Bedlamdan posted:Again? Yes, but this time we didn't do anything particularly wrong, Ettin just decided that that thread isn't what the forums need right now.
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Oct 26, 2015 14:49
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Simian_Prime posted:RIP grognards.txt It's for the best, really. e: The original g.txt made me the TradGames Superstar I am today. That's a really depressing thought.
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Oct 26, 2015 14:59
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paradoxGentleman posted:What do you mean by that? GURPS books seem pretty well written to me. The parts that aren't written like a technical manual are pretty decent, yeah. But if you want to actually play the game, you have to read the rules, and those sections are dry as gently caress. I'm getting thirsty just thinking of reading through GURPS Space. There's more math than a textbook. I remember getting together some friends in middle school to play a GURPS game with giant robots because we'd all seen Gundam Wing and Gundam Wing was the poo poo, right? So I get out the core book and GURPS Mecha and after about two hours we just decided to play Goldeneye. Maybe it was because we were idiotic middle school kids, but even now when I crack open my old GURPS books my eyes just sorta glaze over. GURPS is the only system that I would actually want to play because it has some cool premises but I won't because the system itself bores me to tears. Maybe that could be fixed up with better writing, but then again maybe not. But in terms of generic systems, if nothing else will do, GURPS most likely has it covered.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:01
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But GURPS is simple enough that you can distill it down to a single page, even, and the rest of it just however specific you want to get, and what parts of the game you want to be codified versus made-up-on-the-spot.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:05
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I really wish SJG had it in them to do a fifth edition of GURPS. I'm pretty Steve Jackson wouldn't be able to unclench his hands from treasured habits out of the past even if it were profitable though, so 4th it is.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:11
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Okay I just looked it up and apparently there's a new edition of GURPS books from like 2004? I might check that out, all my books are from the late 90s.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:But GURPS is simple enough that you can distill it down to a single page, even, and the rest of it just however specific you want to get, and what parts of the game you want to be codified versus made-up-on-the-spot. I would love to see someone write up how to easily scale up and down the GURPS complexity. I know GURPS Lite exists, and so does GURPS Ultra-Lite, and even One Page GURPS, but I've never seen anyone explain how you can take Ultra-Lite and add the crunchy bits you want without thoroughly knowing the entire system.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:19
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Serf posted:Okay I just looked it up and apparently there's a new edition of GURPS books from like 2004? I might check that out, all my books are from the late 90s. No wonder you could not stand it, 3e is notoriously math heavy. GURPS Vehicles is considered a running joke amongst fans. Here are the Lite and Ultra-Lite version, the latter of which gradenko mentioned. They're free from the SJG werbsite so no :files: here. http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG31-0004 http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0032 e:curses, foiled again.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:19
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paradoxGentleman posted:No wonder you could not stand it, 3e is notoriously math heavy. GURPS Vehicles is considered a running joke amongst fans. Haha, really? I have a copy of GURPS Vehicles (I think GURPS Mecha or Space referred to it) and it is almost destroyed because I spent so long trying to make sense of it. Also maybe its just me, but those old books seem to have very cheap binding, because most of them are in various states of disrepair now, way moreso than even my softcover D&D 3E books.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:25
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Serf posted:There's more math than a textbook. I remember getting together some friends in middle school to play a GURPS game with giant robots because we'd all seen Gundam Wing and Gundam Wing was the poo poo, right? So I get out the core book and GURPS Mecha and after about two hours we just decided to play Goldeneye. Maybe it was because we were idiotic middle school kids, but even now when I crack open my old GURPS books my eyes just sorta glaze over. It wasn't you. Both Mecha and the later editions of Autoduel use a stripped-down version of the GURPS Vehicles rules. It may have the sections on gas-lifting bodies and animal-drawn drivetrains pulled out, but there's still enough math there that you'll want a spreadsheet. gradenko_2000 posted:But GURPS is simple enough that you can distill it down to a single page, even, and the rest of it just however specific you want to get, and what parts of the game you want to be codified versus made-up-on-the-spot. If you're confident enough, or familiar enough with it, certainly-- but you could also say the same thing for just about anything short of Burning Wheel. I've lost track of the number of people I've reassured and told to ignore the advanced combat systems in the 3E rulebook. I've unfortunately also played with people who insist on using everything, straight out of the gate, and turned the whole group off the system for years.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:31
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inklesspen posted:I've never seen anyone explain how you can take Ultra-Lite and add the crunchy bits you want without thoroughly knowing the entire system. This is actually a very valid point. A sliding scale of crunch would be a great resource and I'd love to see this made, but unfortunately I lack the system mastery to do it alone. ...would it be alright to request some help in putting this together? We could set up a time and a place (in the form of a SorceryNet chat room) and work it out.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:35
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Yeah, there isn't going to be another new edition of GURPS for a long time. Especially since 4th edition was set out to fix the rules cruft that hundreds of sourcebooks had caused by using a more modular approach to advantage design along with a general moratorium on new skills after the core. Also it took 16 years for Steve Jackson to admit there needed to be a 4th edition, so good luck on getting a 5th out of him.
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Oct 26, 2015 15:36
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inklesspen posted:I would love to see someone write up how to easily scale up and down the GURPS complexity. I know GURPS Lite exists, and so does GURPS Ultra-Lite, and even One Page GURPS, but I've never seen anyone explain how you can take Ultra-Lite and add the crunchy bits you want without thoroughly knowing the entire system. Okay, I don't know how helpful this'll be, but I'll take a stab at it: The core of the game is "roll 3d6 and get equal to or under your effective skill to succeed". From probability, we know that an effective skill of 13 or better is going to succeed very often (83.80% of the time) As the player, you want to push your effective skill to 13 or better. Once you get past 13, you can then start "trading off" the excess effective skill in exchange for more precision or trickery. As the GM, if the player already has an effective skill of 13 or better, you want to pull that down, make them work for it. Let's say the player is a British SAS soldier trying to shoot Hitler with a Sniper Rifle. As the GM, you want to impose a penalty for distance, a penalty for smoke, a penalty for Hitler being in a moving vehicle, etc etc, so that the player's effective skill of 20, gets hauled down. If the player can't get better than a 10 after all the obstacles you've put in their way, then maybe they need to get closer, or wait for the car to stop, or wait for the smoke to clear, etc. As the player, if you have an effective skill of 20, and then the GM already gave you a bunch of modifiers to push it down to 10, and then you played out half the session to improve your shot to where it's now a 16, then you still have "room": take a -2 penalty to shoot Hitler in the dick and you've still got a 90% chance of making the shot. So where do the books come in? The difference between Ultra-Lite and Basic is that Basic tells you exactly what modifiers you can and cannot apply to the shot, and how strong or weak those modifiers are. If there's a high level of trust between the players and the GM, Ultra-Lite works well because the players know that the GM isn't being overly punitive even if the modifiers are pulled out of the GM's rear end. But even within a good group, using the Basic rules might still be preferable because the GM can just look it up rather than having to make it up. Skills work in the same way: there are BANG! skills which are broad categories of competency, and then there's the master list of specific skills. How you split your skill assignments between the two and which specific skills you want to allow the players to use depends on the kind of game that you want to run. If you're trying to emulate Bad Boys 2, you can probably use Detective Stuff as a BANG skill, but then you split up various gun categories as separate skills. Ultra-Lite effectively uses all Bang skills, and it resembles 13th Age in this regard. For a more explicit example of how to scale up GURPS, this is an excerpt from How to be a GURPS GM: quote:Speed of Play vs. Realism If that looks like a laundry list of stuff, it is, but that's because the author went through the trouble of specifically listing every rule that you would use for a certain level of detail. Anyone running GURPS would do the same mentally, it just looks heavier if you spell it out like that. The Basic Set itself talks about "Cinematic Rules", while other supplements such as Action! and Tactical Shooting have alternative rules that simplify or change the rules to better hit the level of detail that they're trying to promote, such as reducing ranges down to Short, Medium and Long rather than exact foot measurements.
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Oct 26, 2015 16:15
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*GURPS loudly, doesn't apologize*
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Oct 26, 2015 16:22
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DriveThru just started their annual Jack-O-Lantern hunt. So far it looks like highlights are Pendragon and Better Angels.
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Oct 26, 2015 19:08
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Kwyndig posted:Yeah, there isn't going to be another new edition of GURPS for a long time. Especially since 4th edition was set out to fix the rules cruft that hundreds of sourcebooks had caused by using a more modular approach to advantage design along with a general moratorium on new skills after the core. Also it took 16 years for Steve Jackson to admit there needed to be a 4th edition, so good luck on getting a 5th out of him. Is there a need for a new edition of GURPS? As someone who runs the game a lot, I don't see a need for it. It works for what I want it to do. As far as I know from other people who play GURPS, they don't seem interested in a new edition. Serf posted:Okay I just looked it up and apparently there's a new edition of GURPS books from like 2004? I might check that out, all my books are from the late 90s. 4th edition GURPS streamlined the 3rd edition rules and there's a lot of official material to support it. If someone's opinion of GURPS is because of 3rd earlier edition, then they should check out 4th.
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Oct 26, 2015 19:08
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DocBubonic posted:Is there a need for a new edition of GURPS? As someone who runs the game a lot, I don't see a need for it. It works for what I want it to do. As far as I know from other people who play GURPS, they don't seem interested in a new edition. They did a pretty good job refining the system and refraining from reinventing poo poo all the time in supplements. However, the core game doesn't have very good presentation for someone who isn't already all "Yeah, GURPS!" The Skill list in particular is just an enormous pile of stuff with hardly any guidance on what to do with it, which I think is a pretty significant failure for a "toolbox" game.
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Oct 26, 2015 19:13
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Plague of Hats posted:They did a pretty good job refining the system and refraining from reinventing poo poo all the time in supplements. However, the core game doesn't have very good presentation for someone who isn't already all "Yeah, GURPS!" The Skill list in particular is just an enormous pile of stuff with hardly any guidance on what to do with it, which I think is a pretty significant failure for a "toolbox" game. 4th is definitely a good refinement from 3rd but it still has a ton of issues, most notably with pricing/division of skills (do we really need five different Hard/VHard math skills?) and advantages/disadvantages. I'm pretty much completely over points-based flaws by now but at the very least a lot of the costs of all those things need to be adjusted. There are also issues with how it deals with some flaws like Alcoholism--basically you pay your points and then never go near a drink and you're fine, clean and sober and 10 points (or whatever) stronger. I feel that this is an outdated approach, but GURPS doesn't really support 'drama points' or other benefits for playing to flaws--I feel like that should be re-evaluated as an option, if not necessarily the default. There's also a lot of rules buried in skill descriptions like Housekeeping being where you want to look for 'clean up forensic evidence' and such. So I mean, yeah, it works, and it's playable, and with a reasonably light touch you can do a lot with it. I've played a lot of GURPS and it is probably my favorite crunchy system but it still needs cleanup and adjustment and another editing pass on the rules text itself. It's not Gygaxian prose by any means but it could be a bit less obtuse.
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Oct 26, 2015 19:38
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Plague of Hats posted:They did a pretty good job refining the system and refraining from reinventing poo poo all the time in supplements. However, the core game doesn't have very good presentation for someone who isn't already all "Yeah, GURPS!" The Skill list in particular is just an enormous pile of stuff with hardly any guidance on what to do with it, which I think is a pretty significant failure for a "toolbox" game. Yeah, I can this as a problem. I don't think about it because I'm used to GURPS as a system. Someone just starting the system is just going to be flooded with too many options and no direction. Putting in something that would help new people understand and make sense of the system would be a good addition to the game. occamsnailfile posted:4th is definitely a good refinement from 3rd but it still has a ton of issues, most notably with pricing/division of skills (do we really need five different Hard/VHard math skills?) and advantages/disadvantages. I'm pretty much completely over points-based flaws by now but at the very least a lot of the costs of all those things need to be adjusted. There are also issues with how it deals with some flaws like Alcoholism--basically you pay your points and then never go near a drink and you're fine, clean and sober and 10 points (or whatever) stronger. I feel that this is an outdated approach, but GURPS doesn't really support 'drama points' or other benefits for playing to flaws--I feel like that should be re-evaluated as an option, if not necessarily the default. Five math specializations is a bit much and to make things worse some of those wouldn't be areas I would make as math specializations (Computer Science, Cryptology, and Surveying. They all require math, but should they be specializations of math?). However, that might be because I don't see Mathematics specializations come up in games very often. I'm likely to house rule skills in such a way to streamline the skills and keep them simple as much as possible. Other people who play GURPS might enjoy having all the skills such as they are. As for disadvantages for points, I like it. Still I agree with you on fixing the disadvantage system. Some should have the point values changed, while others need to be changed. Also the book doesn't make it clear that some disadvantage values could be altered due to modifiers or the values could be changed for a campaign. I think the material put out for GURPS since 4e came out helps to manage the game better. For instance, GURPS Action! discusses the use of housekeeping to clean up forensic evidence. However that means buying more books, so not the best solution. Having seen these points, I can see a need for a new edition. Or at least a revised version of the two core books.
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Oct 26, 2015 20:56
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The manual does specify that you have to pick disadvantages that are actually a liability for your character if you want the points. That being said, a system to enforce this without resorting to GM fiat would not go amiss.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:08
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Evil Mastermind posted:DriveThru just started their annual Jack-O-Lantern hunt. So far it looks like highlights are Pendragon and Better Angels. Yeah, of the 7 things available those are the two highlights. Pendragon 1e also comes with 50% off the latest Pendragon (so you get it for $10). The full list of what's where is in the Deals & Steals thread.
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Oct 26, 2015 21:54
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DocBubonic posted:Is there a need for a new edition of GURPS? As someone who runs the game a lot, I don't see a need for it. It works for what I want it to do. As far as I know from other people who play GURPS, they don't seem interested in a new edition. I would really like a total overhaul of the Magic rules so I don't just use the alternate systems and forget the original one even exists.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:23
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occamsnailfile posted:I really wish SJG had it in them to do a fifth edition of GURPS. I'm pretty Steve Jackson wouldn't be able to unclench his hands from treasured habits out of the past even if it were profitable though, so 4th it is. I don't think there's that much of a buyer demand, either. People who want GURPS just house rule the current system, and SJG is fine with that as long as the dump trucks full on Munchkin money keep rolling in.
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Oct 26, 2015 22:42
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