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dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Leperflesh posted:

"It's really not that hard to understand" is precisely the defense that was mounted for THAC0. The measure shouldn't be "can someone figure this out;" it should be "Is this the simplest, most straightforward mechanic that adequately accomplishes the design goals."
It actually seems less hard than THAC0 by a wide margin, since you're generally just making groups of "biggest die+smallest dice possible to get at least 10" and don't need to subtract.

Now, I'm not going to defend the 15's. Those are definitely harder and probably wreak merry hell with the game's probability curves. 10's, when you're using 10-sided dice, aren't.

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signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
You guys see Monte Cook's new poo poo?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/worlds-of-the-cypher-system?ref=category_recommended

Falstaff
Apr 27, 2008

I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

jivjov posted:

Also ending very soon is Aaron Allston's Strike Force. I honestly don't know a lot about the game or system, I backed it solely because I loved Allston's novels and wanted to show some posthumous appreciation.

Well, poo poo. I would have been all over this, 'specially with them getting Dennis Loubet to do the art again. Completely flew under my radar, though. You have failed me, thread!

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

signalnoise posted:

You guys see Monte Cook's new poo poo?

I would be more excited to see Monte Cook's new shirt than to see any more Cypher System products.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
Seriously, though, if you want to talk about a bad system... :)

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Explore new worlds and play in any genre, so long as your character concepts can be boiled down to Fighters, Wizards, and Rogues. What game will Monte Cook badly implement ideas from next? Will there be an entire dimension devoted to Gypsy stereotypes? Back to find out!

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

dwarf74 posted:

Seriously, though, if you want to talk about a bad system... :)

Has he still not fixed the Death Spiral in the system yet?

I mean, it would be as simple as "Player characters have Health equal to the sum of their maximum stat pools. When they lose 1/3 of their health, they're X. When they lose 2/3, they're Y. When they lose 3/3, they're unconscious." Ya know instead of your fate point pool also being your health.

Also, this is the second game to come out on Kickstarter that looks like it was inspired by Exalted...

Godbound: A Game of Divine Heroes has launched. It's an OSR game so interest in that subsection of the hobby is necessary. Kevin Crawford has consistently released on time in the past, his products have high quality and production values, and have been pretty fun. Also, to my knowledge, he isn't "outdated" is his views like some of the OSR, if you know what I mean.

If you want to try before you buy, he has put up a link to the game that he wanted backers to share.

S.J.
May 19, 2008

Just who the hell do you think we are?

Isn't that the system that actively punishes you for doing anything as a melee class?

gnome7
Oct 21, 2010

Who's this Little
Spaghetti?? ??

How does this guy make 77k in the first 24 hours when his games are so bad?

There is no justice in the tradgames design world.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

gnome7 posted:

How does this guy make 77k in the first 24 hours when his games are so bad?

Name recognition, mostly.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

gnome7 posted:

How does this guy make 77k in the first 24 hours when his games are so bad?

There is no justice in the tradgames design world.
Seriously, gently caress this hobby.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

legit post:

The settings for the Cypher KS are actually interesting. Seizing the power of fantasy gods? Sci-fi dino wrangling in prehistory? Supers where having powers drives you 90's Iron Age? Sounds fun!

But then they're tied to this system where your character is good at ONE THING and just this ONE THING forever, and has all this stuff that's so "babby's first storygaem" it's depressing.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Seriously, gently caress this hobby.

There is a lot of reasons to say gently caress this hobby. A lot of. But, name recognition getting money for products that are worse than smaller, independent titles is more a business constant than anything unique to the hobby.

gnome7
Oct 21, 2010

Who's this Little
Spaghetti?? ??

Covok posted:

There is a lot of reasons to say gently caress this hobby. A lot of. But, name recognition getting money for products that are worse than smaller, independent titles is more a business constant than anything unique to the hobby.

Yeah. I know I'm the one who posed the question but it was mostly rhetorical. This guy's got 20 years of name recognition and successfully delivered products and that makes you money even if what you're delivering isn't very good.

I know why he's making money, I'm just sad about how it's an order of magnitude more money than what I get.

gnome7 fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Mar 1, 2016

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Covok posted:

There is a lot of reasons to say gently caress this hobby. A lot of. But, name recognition getting money for products that are worse than smaller, independent titles is more a business constant than anything unique to the hobby.
Give me a break, it's the closest thing I have to a catchphrase.

Ceterum censeo Frank Trollman esse delendam.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

gnome7 posted:

How does this guy make 77k in the first 24 hours when his games are so bad?

There is no justice in the tradgames design world.

Monte Cook is mediocre at design but fantastic at self-promotion. Compare his fame to that of Tweet or poor forgotten Williams, and that's because whenever he launches anything, he makes sure his name is as prominent as the title. Guy somehow got Monte Cook's World of Darkness published, since his name has become a brand bearing his section of the 3e triforce.

After all, Sean K launched a game design career based on being "the guy who designed the krenshar", and by comparison, Cook was exposed directly to the feat forge. So if you think d20 was great design - and since it was a formative game for a lot of folks, there will always be people who do - the Monte Cook brand is an extension of that success, something he will never let you forget.

Helical Nightmares
Apr 30, 2009

Covok posted:

Has he still not fixed the Death Spiral in the system yet?

I mean, it would be as simple as "Player characters have Health equal to the sum of their maximum stat pools. When they lose 1/3 of their health, they're X. When they lose 2/3, they're Y. When they lose 3/3, they're unconscious." Ya know instead of your fate point pool also being your health.

Also, this is the second game to come out on Kickstarter that looks like it was inspired by Exalted...

Godbound: A Game of Divine Heroes has launched. It's an OSR game so interest in that subsection of the hobby is necessary. Kevin Crawford has consistently released on time in the past, his products have high quality and production values, and have been pretty fun. Also, to my knowledge, he isn't "outdated" is his views like some of the OSR, if you know what I mean.

If you want to try before you buy, he has put up a link to the game that he wanted backers to share.

:argh:

Sine Nomine Publishing has another Kickstarter.

Godbound


The art budget has clearly increased.



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1637945166/godbound-a-game-of-divine-heroes



quote:

Godbound is a tabletop role-playing game of newborn divinities awakening to unimaginable power. These men and women find themselves bound to the Words of Creation, the primal powers of a fallen cosmos where the Throne of God stands empty.

The world is shattered, its scattered realms racked by the aftershocks of the Last War and the final terrible struggle of the Made Gods who strove to replace the vanished Creator. Some realms have been reduced to nothing more than blasted wastelands and silent bones, while others still endure in faded splendor and growing hardship. Their natural laws flicker, for the great engines of Heaven have begun to fail from lack of care. Their angelic guardians were long ago dispersed by the Made Gods and now nurse a bitter hatred of humanity's usurpation.

There are heroes still, and shining cities, and peaceful villages where a son may grow old in his father's trade, but these things darken with each new year's passage. The world winds down by slow inches. Into this twilight age have come the Godbound. Some say that it is the decaying husks of the Made Gods that give them their power, gobbets of divinity falling like rot to congeal about the souls of humankind. Others believe that it is the work of the Creator, reaching out from Their silence to touch Their creations with new light. Most do pretend to know why it is that a common peasant girl should ignite with the sun's own brilliance, or a grizzled old soldier should suddenly find half an army falling before his notched blade.

The Godbound bring hope and terror in equal measure. Even the freshly-awakened among them have incredible powers, able to hurl thunderbolts like lesser men throw stones, or spit curses that kill five generations of their enemy's kin. They are burnt to ashes, and rise anew. They are buried under hillsides, and shout the stones apart. They sing up gold from barren earth or pour out an autumn harvest from their saddlebags. They work miracles, and men tremble.

Yet they are men and women, with the dreams that men and women dream. Some are saviors, determined to lift their people from their hardships and lead them to a better day. Others are mercenaries, lending their aid to whatever lord or sorcerer-prince can pay them in suitable coin. And some, of course, are blind fools who wield their powers with the recklessness of children, building their dreams on the bones of the poor mortals around them. There are few who can gainsay a Godbound's will.

Even so, such terrible powers do exist. In the wilderness the wretched parasite gods swell on stolen celestial power, sucking the world's blood from its wounds. Grim eldritch adepts plumb nameless secrets and forge pacts with the monstrous Uncreated for power enough to tax even a divinity. Hulking Misbegotten shamble from the darkness and bring their numberless spawn behind them. These and other foes can force a Godbound to flee or perish if the newborn wielder of the Words hasn't the help of a faithful pantheon of allies.

The heroes of Godbound are hurled into a world unprepared for their coming. They will shake the pillars of fallen Heaven and scar the thrones of the kings of earth. Some will seek adventure, others the pleasures of rule, and a few no more than the small and homely things that fate would conspire to deny them. Yet what they will find, in the end, only you can say.


What Does Godbound Offer?


Godbound is a tabletop role-playing game from Sine Nomine Publishing built specifically to support the tremendous deeds and realm-changing ambitions of demigod PCs. Forget zero-to-hero; characters in Godbound start off as legendary powers. From the very first game session they have the gifts and abilities necessary to fulfill their role as throne-shaking wild cards in a world that is slowly crumbling around them.

Yet this support isn't just for the players. Godbound is built in the classic Sine Nomine Publishing style, fabricated from the very start with the tools, techniques, and resources a GM needs to actually support demigod PCs and their doings. Godbound doesn't leave you alone to guess at the sort of things these heroes might be challenged by, or invite you to handwave the results of their deeds and ambitions. It gives you solid mechanics and clear tools to make a GM's job a pleasure rather than a grim test of ingenuity.

Godbound's mechanics are inspired by the classic old-school role-playing games of the early eighties, streamlined in ways informed by more modern design trends. While the single core book contains everything you need to play a campaign, you can also pull in content from these other old-school games and slot it swiftly into your campaign. You won't run out of content for your far-faring heroes when you can draw from forty years worth of creative effort to flesh out your campaign world or divert your players.

Even those GMs who don't actually want to use the mechanics that Godbound provides can get value from the book. The faction system that handles PC interaction with kingdoms and cabals and the change-creating system that manages their efforts to induce large-scale alterations in a place are both easily lifted and exported to other gaming systems. There are dozens of pages of GM tools for building noble courts, perilous ruins, or interesting obstacles to a goal, all system-neutral as well, and all meant to be slipped in conveniently into almost any fantasy role-playing game.

While I'm proud of the playability and flexibility of Godbound, I recognize that some GMs will want to use other systems with the tools I provide. In the traditional Sine Nomine Publishing fashion, I've made a point of building the book so it's still useful to people who prefer to use other systems, and still gives them their money's worth in resources and toolkits.

The funds raised with this Kickstarter will support the creation of a free PDF version of Godbound containing everything necessary to play the game, much as I have done with my award-winning Stars Without Number sci-fi RPG. This free version will help ensure that you have an easy time picking up additional players for your table. Beyond this, there will be an additional deluxe version that backers will receive as part of their pledge. In this deluxe edition are about 40 more pages of content, including:

Rules for creating mortal PCs, both common men and women struggling to survive and those heroes who can threaten even the Godbound.
Guidelines for the theotechnical cyberware of the Bright Republic and the enchanted clockwork augmentations of Vissio.
The terrible godwalkers of the Last War and the rules for building and running these titanic humanoid engines of sorcerous war.
The dread Witch-Queens of the Ulstang Skerries and their draugr thralls, both as opponents for your Godbound PCs and examples of how to create major enemies.

The True Strifes, divine martial arts patterned on the primordial conflicts of nature and passion. A half-dozen styles are described for the use of PCs and enemies, with each style trimmed with a premade NPC nemesis for easy campaign use.
Rules for building divine Paradises as citadels and soul-refuges for the Godbound and their worshipers. Defend your heavens against the machinations of your immortal foes!

Themed Godbound, for campaigns and settings that have particular flavors and styles to individual types of Godbound. These rules help you build your own types for your campaign, or use pre-made varieties for heroic paragons of human capability, primordial shapeshifters, refugees from hostile destinies, or elemental scions.







Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

dwarf74 posted:

It actually seems less hard than THAC0 by a wide margin, since you're generally just making groups of "biggest die+smallest dice possible to get at least 10" and don't need to subtract.

Now, I'm not going to defend the 15's. Those are definitely harder and probably wreak merry hell with the game's probability curves. 10's, when you're using 10-sided dice, aren't.

I'm seriously convinced that basic board game mechanics are too complicated for TRPG players because they require more than ten seconds in Excel to optimize.

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.

Liquid Communism posted:

I'm seriously convinced that basic board game mechanics are too complicated for TRPG players because they require more than ten seconds in Excel to optimize.

Please post the excel code to "optimize" 7S 2E. Seriously! Because AFAIK it requires considering every possible N-partitioning of of dice to be sure you get the right answer (hence NP-complete), and I'd love a counter-example! If you do it out to, say, 7 dice, I'll be satisfied.

E: As a start to your claim, here's the code I wrote in Haskell for the claims I made before:
code:
import Data.List

subsets []  = [[]]
subsets (x:xs) = subsets xs ++ map (x:) (subsets xs)

outcomes = [1..10]
ilsmall n = take n $ repeat outcomes

allRolls n = nub $ map sort $ sequence $ ilsmall n

nextCombinations [input] =
  let possibles = subsets input
      usefuls   =  filter (\y -> (sum y) > 9) possibles
  in map next usefuls
    where
      next ins = [input \\ ins, ins]
nextCombinations ([]:more) = [more]
nextCombinations (input:more) =
  let possibles = subsets input
      usefuls   =  nub $ map sort $ filter (\y -> (sum y) > 9) possibles
  in map next usefuls
    where
      next ins = [input \\ ins, ins] ++ more

isDone ([]:more) = True
isDone (xs:more) = if (sum xs) < 10
                   then True
                   else False

possibles input = p $ nextCombinations [input]
  where
    p inputs =
      let (answers, works) = partition isDone inputs
      in if works == []
            then answers
            else answers ++ p (concatMap nextCombinations works)

answer input =
  let outputs = sortBy lengthComp $ map (sortBy lengthComp) $ nub $ map sort $ map (map sort) $ map (filter ((/=)[])) $ possibles input
      counts  = map tenCounts outputs
      couts   = zip counts outputs
  in couts

printer [] = do putStrLn ""
                return ()
printer (x:xs) = do putStrLn $ show x
                    printer xs

lengthComp l1 l2 = if l1l > l2l then GT else if l1l == l2l then EQ else LT
  where
    l1l = length l1
    l2l = length l2

tenCounts [] = 0
tenCounts (x:xs) = (if (sum x > 9) then 1 else 0) + tenCounts xs

QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Mar 2, 2016

jmzero
Jul 24, 2007

quote:

Please post the excel code to "optimize" 7S 2E. Seriously! Because AFAIK it requires considering every possible N-partitioning of of dice to be sure you get the right answer (hence NP-complete), and I'd love a counter-example! If you do it out to, say, 7 dice, I'll be satisfied.

The DP solution is O(2^n); 2^7 is 128. This isn't going to burn out any computers, and is not going to be hard to work out in Excel.

That said, I don't think the system is a good idea; it's not a fun little puzzle or something, it's just a little bit of boring work you get to do sometimes if you want the best rolls. Like, imagine instead of numbers on dice they put equations, and so if you had to pick a dice you'd need to solve a few chunks of math. Would that make your pirate game better? I don't think so; I think it would drag the game to a halt the first time a critical edge case comes up. And once everyone generally had it worked out, it would just be a little bit of extra boredom every time.

VVV: Lol, yes, VBA is Turing complete and up to the task... The following is terrible code, but is probably right (it's been a while since my TopCoder days, I'm not going to look up Gosper's Hack for this, and I don't actually have a copy of Excel at home to test with).

code:
    Dim memo As New Dictionary(Of Integer, Integer)

    Private Function GetScore(d As List(Of Integer))
        Dim a As Integer = (2 ^ d.Count) - 1
        Return GetScore(d, a)
    End Function

    Private Function GetScore(d As List(Of Integer), m As Integer)
        If memo.ContainsKey(m) Then Return memo(m)
        Dim sum As Integer
        For dn = 0 To d.Count - 1
            If (m And (2 ^ dn)) > 0 Then sum += d(dn)
        Next
        Dim b As Integer = IIf(sum >= 10, 1, 0)
        For uu = 1 To m - 1
            If (m And uu) = uu Then b = Math.Max(b, GetScore(d, uu) + GetScore(d, m - uu))
        Next
        memo.Add(m, b)
        Return b
    End Function

jmzero fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Mar 2, 2016

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Board games are specific use cases. Rpgs are inherently about rules that follow unpredictable narrative.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

QuantumNinja posted:

Please post the excel code to "optimize" 7S 2E. Seriously! Because AFAIK it requires considering every possible N-partitioning of of dice to be sure you get the right answer (hence NP-complete), and I'd love a counter-example! If you do it out to, say, 7 dice, I'll be satisfied.

I don't think you understood my point. I am in favor of it not being trivial to optimize, because optimization and the gameplay it drives bore me and the attitudes behind it generally detract from my game experience.

The Bee
Nov 25, 2012

Making his way to the ring . . .
from Deep in the Jungle . . .

The Big Monkey!

jmzero posted:

The DP solution is O(2^n); 2^7 is 128. This isn't going to burn out any computers, and is not going to be hard to work out in Excel.

That said, I don't think the system is a good idea; it's not a fun little puzzle or something, it's just a little bit of boring work you get to do sometimes if you want the best rolls. Like, imagine instead of numbers on dice they put equations, and so if you had to pick a dice you'd need to solve a few chunks of math. Would that make your pirate game better? I don't think so; I think it would drag the game to a halt the first time a critical edge case comes up. And once everyone generally had it worked out, it would just be a little bit of extra boredom every time.

Of course,, it all makes sense now. 7th Sea 2nd Edition is actually Frog Fractions 2!

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.

jmzero posted:

The DP solution is O(2^n); 2^7 is 128. This isn't going to burn out any computers, and is not going to be hard to work out in Excel.

That said, I don't think the system is a good idea; it's not a fun little puzzle or something, it's just a little bit of boring work you get to do sometimes if you want the best rolls. Like, imagine instead of numbers on dice they put equations, and so if you had to pick a dice you'd need to solve a few chunks of math. Would that make your pirate game better? I don't think so; I think it would drag the game to a halt the first time a critical edge case comes up. And once everyone generally had it worked out, it would just be a little bit of extra boredom every time.

Yeah, I'm not concerned a computer can't do it. See:

QuantumNinja posted:

While it's relatively doable for small inputs (and 7S restricts inputs to <=10), it's still a dumb way to build a game system.

I just wanted to watch someone to a DP solution in Excel :v:

E: And, yeah, basically the ideal thing to do would be to print out the four pieces of paper with the optimal solutions. Look up your roll, report the solution to the GM. But that indexing, even, is freaking dumb.

E2: VVVVVVVV Leperflesh, you're killing the dream!

QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Mar 2, 2016

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

QuantumNinja posted:

I just wanted to watch someone to a DP solution in Excel :v:

You can embed VBA into Excel so it's actually... well, not trivial, someone would have to re-write the code you wrote in VBA, but it's not like you'd have to do it all using Excel functions.

e. It looks like VBA might not be touring-complete. But, there are plugins for embedding full-blown C++, for example.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 2, 2016

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.
Kickstarter suggested The Name of God to me. Does anyone know anything about it?

SaviourX
Sep 30, 2003

The only true Catwoman is Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, or Eartha Kitt.

Meanwhile, in the hot aftermarket accessories department:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/878938288/the-lazy-gamer

(disclaimer: I know exactly zero of these people, but they post in the local games fbook and the picture backgrounds are of one of our local gaming stores)

Have fun with our cheap as poo poo Canadian exchange rate :canada:

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
You really shouldn't have to code an Excel macro in order to assemble the best possible result off a pool of d10s. :v:

Mojo Jojo
Sep 21, 2005

SaviourX posted:

Meanwhile, in the hot aftermarket accessories department:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/878938288/the-lazy-gamer

(disclaimer: I know exactly zero of these people, but they post in the local games fbook and the picture backgrounds are of one of our local gaming stores)

Have fun with our cheap as poo poo Canadian exchange rate :canada:

This is almost a good idea, but just feels like a recipe for player areas getting swept clean and things sliding about after over enthusiastic pushing

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Liquid Communism posted:

I don't think you understood my point. I am in favor of it not being trivial to optimize, because optimization and the gameplay it drives bore me and the attitudes behind it generally detract from my game experience.

It's not even about optimizing a character. It's about optimizing the outcome of a given roll based on what it's results could be. I don't think there's a die system that actually makes this a situation. There are two consequences as of now in the system for poor optimization of a roll outcome: 1. Number of raises (success) in a roll and 2. Number of leftover dice accessible for the GM to trade for Dread Points in exchange for one Hero Point.

As an example (a big edge case), take a roll of 8,5,1,1,1,1,1. There'll only ever be one raise from this roll, but depending on how the dice are grouped is the difference between the GM given a ton of resources to go to town on PCs in exchange for a single point of a more meager one for one trade. The mentioned heuristic of adding smallest+biggest actually fails here.

The best outcome is: 5,1,1,1,1,1 and the 8 left over (a heuristic of packing smaller numbers first is the best method here).

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Mojo Jojo posted:

This is almost a good idea, but just feels like a recipe for player areas getting swept clean and things sliding about after over enthusiastic pushing

I agree, though it at least looks like they made the base tall enough to clear dice and meeples.

Slimnoid
Sep 6, 2012

Does that mean I don't get the job?

SaviourX posted:

Meanwhile, in the hot aftermarket accessories department:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/878938288/the-lazy-gamer

(disclaimer: I know exactly zero of these people, but they post in the local games fbook and the picture backgrounds are of one of our local gaming stores)

Have fun with our cheap as poo poo Canadian exchange rate :canada:

This is kind of a neat idea, but you could build something comparable with a turn table and a trip to Home Depot for a lot less.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Absolutely, it doesn't take a lot of effort or expense to make a big lazy susan. Their selling point seems to be that they're offering craftsmanship and something that will look a lot better than a slab of plywood, no matter how you doll it up.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

SaviourX posted:

Meanwhile, in the hot aftermarket accessories department:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/878938288/the-lazy-gamer

(disclaimer: I know exactly zero of these people, but they post in the local games fbook and the picture backgrounds are of one of our local gaming stores)

Have fun with our cheap as poo poo Canadian exchange rate :canada:

So that's kind of interesting, actually. I somewhat wish it were magnetic, though, as that could address a lot of the sliding problems with a little modification to the components of one's favorite games. It does look as though it would make a mess of games for which you sleeved the cards.

Earthorn
Jul 18, 2012

This kickstarter just popped up in my Facebook feed, for 28mm scaled furniture:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cybernoir/stone-skulls-28mm-tabletop-gaming-miniature-furnit

:10bux: gets you in at four pieces of decent-sized furniture.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.
Jumping in a little late on the 7th Sea thing, but I agree with QN that it's a bad idea to use systems like this. In this case, the outcomes are computationally difficult but fairly easy to approximate intuitively for small inputs.

The problem isn't with optimizing characters. I don't care for the idea that a resolution system with an obfuscated probability curve is a good way to prevent optimization races like in Shadowrun. The problem in those games is that some choices are definitively better than others because of rule interactions. If you want to avoid that kind of thing, a simpler resolution system is better for designers since they can spot degenerate cases and avoid weird exploits more easily.

And that's the problem with a resolution system like this. It becomes very hard from the design standpoint to avoid corner cases and problematic rule interactions - especially later on as expansions and splats add more rules and character options. We've all seen how a seemingly benign addition can spiral out of control when combined with obscure rule X and character option Y. The harder it is to determine the probabilities of a resolution system, the harder it is to prevent a design error like that.

What worries me about 7th Sea's system isn't that I can't build the perfect character in it. It's that it's hard to tell if a character that's extremely effective is just getting lucky or is actually broken without sitting down and doing a lot of work.

Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Mar 2, 2016

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib

Liquid Communism posted:

I don't think you understood my point. I am in favor of it not being trivial to optimize, because optimization and the gameplay it drives bore me and the attitudes behind it generally detract from my game experience.

The way to deal with optimization issues is to try and make the in-built character options fairly even, so low and high optimization are able to both play in the same narrative. This doesn't stop optimization, it just means that only the people who take their time to figure out the formulas behind it will be able to optimize, and those who can't or won't will lag behind.

And as Xel said, it's not even what we normally think of as optimization. It's "Does my character have a decent shot at jumping across that ravine?" It makes it difficult to be able to judge the odds, even in situations where the character should know. I mean, if it's a situation where the character has no idea, the GM can just say "You're not sure," and let you gamble that the DC is within your grasp. If it's something your character can look at and say "I've got a pretty good shot at this," you should know that as a player. Not knowing when it's an easy or a difficult roll makes it tough to be able to say "You know what, I'm gonna risk it. I should be able to do it." Or even, "It's a long shot, but I'll give it a go," because you don't know when it's a long shot or not.

Of course, eventually you'll get used to the system enough that you will be able to get a good gauge on it. And then you're at exactly the same point you were before, you just had to take some time to get a handle on the odds, when you could have known them straight out of the box. Nothing is really gained.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.
Also, obfuscating math never lasts. Give nerds long enough after 7th Sea's launch and, just like roll and keep, they'll be a probability calculator for it.

It's a dumb solution to a problem. Optimixation fans aren't a problem that needs solutions, anyway.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Covok posted:

Also, obfuscating math never lasts. Give nerds long enough after 7th Sea's launch and, just like roll and keep, they'll be a probability calculator for it.

It's a dumb solution to a problem. Optimixation fans aren't a problem that needs solutions, anyway.

The solution to Optimizers is not making it more difficult, but making it more trivial.

Presumably Wick has a table showing the odds on how many raises are possible. I may presume too much though.

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Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках
Oh, hey, look. A video from the devs pointing out that building raises is a thing that literally takes a couple seconds, because it is first grade math.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sSDB_jLSTs

Also, another sourcebook added, this time for the New World's Colonies as the $900k stretch goal. We're already at nine books, so this would round it out for 10 and it's only $60k off with 11 days left.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Mar 2, 2016

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