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I still think Technoir is going to be my go to narrative cyberpunk game, because man it rules.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:56
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golden bubble posted:The new XCom games are 90% "I shoot that guy in the face/ I throw a grenade", but they still have a bunch of activated abilities and combos. What's funny is that this is almost always followed up by mods that add Submachine Guns, two to three Assault Rifle variants, and the difference between a Heavy Machine Gun and a Minigun.
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Sep 8, 2016 01:39
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At the very least Longer War (the mod I assume you're referring to) has a purpose to it. There is greater differentiation in guns because you're given a large crew and there are more upgrade levels to each gun because the campaign is supposed to take longer with a longer progression curve. I mean I don't know who actually finds Longer War to be fun, but it at least has a clear reason for most of its extra stuff, whereas the d20 modern guns have no such excuse. If you want to have equipment porn that's cool and I can dig it, but give me a mechanical reason to bother caring instead of just grabbing the deagle every time. Also see Counter Strike guns and players.
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Sep 8, 2016 01:56
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Mechanical complexity is also far easier handled in video games, where one doesn't have to look up the rules constantly in order to progress. I mean, one might not always understand how it's working, or necessarily have a good handle on the best ways to do things, but things in video games do what they do regardless of ones comprehension. Shadowrun, GURPS, HERO System. Pheonix Command, nothing is too complicated when a computer is handling the rules for you.
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Sep 8, 2016 02:48
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Kwyndig posted:double edit: Look upon the M16 table and DESPAIR I once considered doing a F&F for this book I got for free from a friend.  But I realized all it would be is trying to sum up the tortured math that is an attempt to do a physics sim of gun mechanics and crying tears of blood, so nah. Besides, I review Rifts books, and about every other book has to have a new stack of guns for whatever faction / country / company in that book, but 80% of them are just mild variations on existing weapons, another 10% are useless badly designed garbage, and then 10% are the overpowered ones you might actually use. I wouldn't even mind if they did different things, but most of them don't save for the few freelance writers desperately trying to give an angle to their new gun lists and justify their existence. And then there's the GM's Guide that's mostly just lists of collated weapon stats to reference. 
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Sep 8, 2016 03:25
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Y'know, I like the FFG Star Wars system, but I'll admit that yes, gear lists and tinkering aren't a fantastic way of engaging with the narrative themes of Star Wars. That's why my group handles the majority of the gear and modding minigame away from the table. It's something I enjoy when playing a mechanically inclined character, but it doesn't need to take up a lot of table time. That having been said, there's quite a strong whiff of One-True-Wayism coming off this thread right now. It's a little offputting.
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Sep 8, 2016 04:38
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I think that the example of "gear porn" being depicted in the thread is an egregiously bad one, because it's not even one that's meaningful if the stats are only different in one or two aspects, and with a number difference that's marginal. There's definitely still room for long equipment lists, but it's got to be distinct. Have a Garand be different from a Kar98, but only because a Garand actually will play differently from a Kar98, but then you don't also need to cover all the other bolt-action rifles except maybe for reasons of nationality and availability. A bazooka might also be different enough from a PIAT to be worth distinguishing from each other, as well as the Panzerfaust against all three, but maybe you don't need the M1 Bazooka and the M1A1 to be separate in the gear lists. EDIT: Actually the Counterstrike example is a good one, because the Steyr Scout, the AWP, and the Sig 550 are all distinct weapons that all serve particular niches within the Sniper Rifle category. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 04:49
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RPG Equipment chat has just made me understand what drives people to make Monster Cables. People are stupid enough to buy them. No wonder advertising people are such assholes. They looked into that abyss and it took their loving money!
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Sep 8, 2016 04:52
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3G was also written by Greg Porter. The man who wrote Macho Women with Guns(and CORPS, which is a surprisingly decent game).
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Sep 8, 2016 05:03
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Do you remember the Paranoia weapons chart that just has random loving numbers that don't make any sense? I'm not sure if that was a joke about the industry or just, just a normal chart. 
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Sep 8, 2016 05:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think that the example of "gear porn" being depicted in the thread is an egregiously bad one, because it's not even one that's meaningful if the stats are only different in one or two aspects, and with a number difference that's marginal. My posts about gear porn in the last day or so have definitely been specifically mocking the less granular but overdone poo poo you see in things like D20 based games. Games like old CP2020 and old Shadowrun tended to do those massive equipment lists correctly, because they're fiddly enough that it actually matters what brand of machine pistol you're packing and the difference between a point of armor penetration could literally kill your character in a firefight. When you instead have things like Table 2-4 where you've listed a series of functionally identical weapons with different names is where 'gear porn' gets a bad rep. You should only have multiple listings for items in a category when they're sufficiently distinct to be listed, if all your guns do the same damage, have the same fire rate options, carry the same amount of ammo, weigh the same (or close enough that only someone really familiar with the weapon would notice the weight difference), are the same amount of illegal, and cost the same, but they all differ by a square or two of range that a firefight isn't going to be fought past anyway... well you've made a mistake.
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Sep 8, 2016 05:31
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Valatar posted:What are you hoping for instead? Star Wars is essentially a modern setting in that most disputes are settled through firearms, so "I shoot that guy in the face" is going to sum up most people's actions in combat. There've been some combats where my techie character's been doing techie stuff while the party covers him, for example, but if he wanted somebody dead in short order, he has a blaster rifle modded into a blaster shotgun and would probably opt to use that. Your gear and clothing to actually customize what your character is capable of and how your character views himself or others outside of +1/-1s. It's perfectly reasonable to give special actions/abilities/modifiers based on the styles, brands, and types of gear your characters choose, their methods of transportation, and their backgrounds, and is thematically appropriate. Weapons and armor in Star Wars are very thematically and really mean something beyond just cool visuals, and it would be neat to have that be a bigger part of what is a really awesome narrative system. A lot of the skill trees also boil down to conditional modifiers rather than abilities that give you new ways to interact with the party/NPCs/enemies/whatever. Don't think that I'm calling it a bad system, I'm playing in a game right now and I'm really enjoying most of it. It just doesn't feel quite complete to me.
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Sep 8, 2016 06:09
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ErichZahn posted:Do you remember the Paranoia weapons chart that just has random loving numbers that don't make any sense? I'm not sure if that was a joke about the industry or just, just a normal chart. Working as intended.
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Sep 8, 2016 06:42
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Mr. Maltose posted:I still think Technoir is going to be my go to narrative cyberpunk game, because man it rules. It does.
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Sep 8, 2016 07:59
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:As a kid, I LOVED the Cyberpunk Chromebooks. Never mind that they were just big lists of gear and mods and items, there was something really cool about them, or at least there was in the far past of the 90s. I feel like cyberpunk, as a genre, lends itself to that kind of equipment fetishisation (sometimes literally) in a way that pulp adventure like Star Wars doesn't. The ones that are written in-universe are awesome like that. Shadowrun is the groggiest of grog when it comes to pointlessly over-detailed gear lists (especially in the more modern editions where there is a clear Best Option in most things), but I dearly loved the early edition Street Samurai Catalog. The whole thing is written in-universe as a stolen corporate arms dealer's catalog posted to a neo-anarchist computer forum, with page-sized illustrations of gear and and ad copy, followed by a bunch of hacked-in comments where the posters comment on the gear's place in the world or drop plot hooks. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 12:42
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The Alternity/Star*Drive Arms and Equipment guide was presented like that as well, which is least part of why I loved it so much. It also included an entry for pajamas.
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Sep 8, 2016 13:08
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First thing that comes to mind is the Campaign podcast
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Sep 8, 2016 14:28
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More of the Star Wars movies (4) make customizing a vehicle a significant plot point than ones which are "pulp adventures" (1, by adding fractional elements together). It seems that tricking out your starship is more Star Wars than reenacting Flash Gordon but wallpapering over the racism.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:05
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Brainiac Five posted:More of the Star Wars movies (4) make customizing a vehicle a significant plot point than ones which are "pulp adventures" (1, by adding fractional elements together). It seems that tricking out your starship is more Star Wars than reenacting Flash Gordon but wallpapering over the racism. On this exam, you get zero points unless you show your work.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:11
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Kwyndig posted:My posts about gear porn in the last day or so have definitely been specifically mocking the less granular but overdone poo poo you see in things like D20 based games. Games like old CP2020 and old Shadowrun tended to do those massive equipment lists correctly, because they're fiddly enough that it actually matters what brand of machine pistol you're packing and the difference between a point of armor penetration could literally kill your character in a firefight. Liquid Communism posted:The ones that are written in-universe are awesome like that. Shadowrun is the groggiest of grog when it comes to pointlessly over-detailed gear lists (especially in the more modern editions where there is a clear Best Option in most things), but I dearly loved the early edition Street Samurai Catalog. The whole thing is written in-universe as a stolen corporate arms dealer's catalog posted to a neo-anarchist computer forum, with page-sized illustrations of gear and and ad copy, followed by a bunch of hacked-in comments where the posters comment on the gear's place in the world or drop plot hooks. Everyone in my group bought the Manhunter and paid a hefty cost to outfit it with an internal smartlink, instead of buying the Predator, basically the same gun that already had a smartlink for far less money. Why? Because the Ares Predator holds 15 bullets and the Colt Manhunter holds 16. We never ever ever played a game where we were down to our pistols, we meticulously counted bullets, and that last bullet mattered. I don't know how many people ever did. RPGs with long lists of weapons made more sense in the 90s, when you couldn't just go on Wikipedia to learn every technical detail about exotic guns like the Pancor Jackhammer or Deckard's jury-rigged Steyr-Aug from Blade Runner or whatever. Books like the Street Samurai Catalog are cool because they're actually more about telling you about the setting and implying how the game should be played. (And if I remember right, the SSC introduced things like knockout-dart-guns and net guns to encourage players to consider different tactics. Some of the later sourcebooks also introduced new security gear that was really for the PCs to fight against, not to use.)
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Sep 8, 2016 15:22
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homullus posted:On this exam, you get zero points unless you show your work. Like, only the Death Star escape and the rescue of Palpatine and the arena fight are pulp stories. I well remember all the Robert E. Howard stories split between paranoid fiction and a guy meditating with a hermit. Pulp, as it is understood today, relies on action which is understood on both a campy level and a straightforward level where the events are reliant on an implicit ridiculousness and excess without making things explicit. Most of Star Wars separates the action and the camp, or makes the action explicitly campy. The tension of neo-pulp is relatively rare. I suppose that what will pop up next is a definition of pulp that includes everything in Star Wars, so I do want to point out that by extension this makes the French New Wave and Kurosawa films "pulp". People would probably do better if they admitted they don't really like the "game" part of "role-playing game" to themselves.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:27
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I do wonder what RPGs would look like from a non-consumer-centric -- or dare I say pre- or post-capitalist -- society. it's just assumed you can buy everything, in tremendous variety, at list price, all the time; this makes sense in a horrific corps-run-everything future like Shadowrun, but makes almost no sense in many other games. The lists are provided so that GMs know how much something is "supposed to cost" as a function of human labor (or in reality, as a function of how the designer pulled numbers out of his rear end), but we inevitably view it as a catalog. Yes, I know some games introduce Rarity and tell you to mark things above list price when selling and below when buying back. In my experience, those rules are rarely enforced consistently, if at all. The only game I can think of that really just goes a whole other direction with buying gear is Paranoia.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:29
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homullus posted:I do wonder what RPGs would look like from a non-consumer-centric -- or dare I say pre- or post-capitalist -- society. it's just assumed you can buy everything, in tremendous variety, at list price, all the time; this makes sense in a horrific corps-run-everything future like Shadowrun, but makes almost no sense in many other games. The lists are provided so that GMs know how much something is "supposed to cost" as a function of human labor (or in reality, as a function of how the designer pulled numbers out of his rear end), but we inevitably view it as a catalog. Yes, I know some games introduce Rarity and tell you to mark things above list price when selling and below when buying back. In my experience, those rules are rarely enforced consistently, if at all. What in the actual gently caress.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:31
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Brainiac Five posted:Like, only the Death Star escape and the rescue of Palpatine and the arena fight are pulp stories. I well remember all the Robert E. Howard stories split between paranoid fiction and a guy meditating with a hermit. When I mentioned "showing your work" I actually meant listing what you were considering "vehicle modification." I hope your list does not include disabling/fixing a hyperdrive.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:31
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homullus posted:I do wonder what RPGs would look like from a non-consumer-centric -- or dare I say pre- or post-capitalist -- society. it's just assumed you can buy everything, in tremendous variety, at list price, all the time; this makes sense in a horrific corps-run-everything future like Shadowrun, but makes almost no sense in many other games. The lists are provided so that GMs know how much something is "supposed to cost" as a function of human labor (or in reality, as a function of how the designer pulled numbers out of his rear end), but we inevitably view it as a catalog. Yes, I know some games introduce Rarity and tell you to mark things above list price when selling and below when buying back. In my experience, those rules are rarely enforced consistently, if at all.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:36
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homullus posted:When I mentioned "showing your work" I actually meant listing what you were considering "vehicle modification." I hope your list does not include disabling/fixing a hyperdrive. Episode 1: the motherfucking podrace you facile sack of poo poo. Episode 4: "She's got it where it counts. I've made some special modifications." Episode 5: Hey, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, so I'll just pre-emptively disqualify anything you bring up too. Episode 7: "Plutt added a huggermugger compressor before the hyperdrive initiator."
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Sep 8, 2016 15:37
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Brainiac Five posted:What in the actual gently caress. Dude, that's economic theory 101. As for pre-capitalist societies, there's not a lot to go off of, as most writers aren't interested in doing deep research into pre-currency based societies to write up barter rules when they could just fart out an equipment list with the costs listed as 'skins' or 'bushels of grain' or whatever.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:41
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Brainiac Five posted:Episode 1: the motherfucking podrace you facile sack of poo poo. I don't think breaking something and restoring it to its normal working order is modification in the sense of gun mods and weapon hard points or whatever in RPGs, unexpectedly angry person.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:42
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Brainiac Five posted:Episode 4: "She's got it where it counts. I've made some special modifications."
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Sep 8, 2016 15:48
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oh my god this argument is STILL GOING
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Sep 8, 2016 15:58
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See also the new thread title.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:59
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Zereth posted:I'm not sure a device which is introduced pre-customized and nobody makes any modifications to during the course of the movie really counts as customizing a vehicle being a significant plot point. (a) only literally include the sorts of things you see onscreen in the movies, and that the hyperdrive thingamajig is a post-facto justification of a bad roll, invoked aspect, etc., or (b) if you think it's appropriate for an RPG to pay attention to the stuff that would not make it onto a movie screen, when your player says, "Hey, I'd like to buy a hyperdrive thingamajig and add it to my ship" and the GM asks for their rolls for the modification. Frankly, I think both are legit ways to approach it and that it's weird anyone's arguing about which way is right. 
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Sep 8, 2016 15:59
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dwarf74 posted:Frankly, I think both are legit ways to approach it and that it's weird anyone's arguing about which way is right. The argument is more about which way captures the feeling of Star Wars better. I'm in the (a) camp.
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Sep 8, 2016 16:03
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Zereth posted:I'm not sure a device which is introduced pre-customized and nobody makes any modifications to during the course of the movie really counts as customizing a vehicle being a significant plot point. There is a major difference between "my car is fast because it looks sleek", "my car is fast because it's the proper make and model", and "my car is fast because I tricked it out." Star Wars draws on hot-rodding, low-riding, drag racing, etc. as cultural inspirations. Of course, in our ideal cinematic rules-light game, since it's only thematic and not on screen at any point, it is out of bounds and if loving Gary keeps wanting to play a space mechanic instead of taking the Luke Playbook he's going to get a very stern talking-to. Kwyndig posted:Dude, that's economic theory 101. No society has used barter except briefly during the collapse of an existing monetary system. Saying "consumerism is about the desire for material goods for instrumental purposes" is naive. It would behoove you to go beyond Econ 101 and Marxism 99.
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Sep 8, 2016 16:06
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homullus posted:I do wonder what RPGs would look like from a non-consumer-centric -- or dare I say pre- or post-capitalist -- society. it's just assumed you can buy everything, in tremendous variety, at list price, all the time; this makes sense in a horrific corps-run-everything future like Shadowrun, but makes almost no sense in many other games. The lists are provided so that GMs know how much something is "supposed to cost" as a function of human labor (or in reality, as a function of how the designer pulled numbers out of his rear end), but we inevitably view it as a catalog. Yes, I know some games introduce Rarity and tell you to mark things above list price when selling and below when buying back. In my experience, those rules are rarely enforced consistently, if at all. Shadowrun had a Availability rating for gear reflecting the difficulty of acquiring things illegally. A cheap Ares pistol might be available behind any Stuffer Shack, while expensive cyberware might require some connections.
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Sep 8, 2016 16:07
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Mors Rattus posted:oh my god this argument is STILL GOING If you don't want other people to intrude with their differences of opinion, you could always go to private messaging. 
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Sep 8, 2016 16:07
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Why should I be the only one who has to stop shitposting
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Sep 8, 2016 16:09
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Mors Rattus posted:Why should I be the only one who has to stop shitposting Should probably make it more explicit of a rule that disagreeing with people is bad posting then. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 8, 2016 16:12
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Serf posted:The argument is more about which way captures the feeling of Star Wars better. I'm in the (a) camp. But (b) is how more traditional RPGs tend to run, and how previous Star Wars RPGs have run, and how a lot of players run their games. And Star Wars gaming has been around in one form or another since the mid/late 80's. Heck; WEG put out so many technical manuals, alien catalogs, etc. that it was the foundational material for the whole EU. It's not crazy for a Star Wars RPG to follow in those footsteps, either. e: I mean, can we at least agree that "emulating the movies and going fast and furious, ignoring details in favor of theme" and "experiencing the (fictional) universe in all its nitty gritty details" are both legit targets for RPG play? dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 16:13
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Brainiac Five posted:Episode 1: the motherfucking podrace you facile sack of poo poo. The comment about the Falcon is irrelevant to anything that happens on screen except as explanation. You never see the characters making hard decisions between smuggling compartments or more guns or whatever. It's just establishing believability for when it outruns the Imperials. Similarly, the pod race, and even the construction of the pod itself, isn't really about what equipment the characters are choosing. They're just challenges to overcome. RPG rules exist to provide incentive for players to take certain desired actions (e.g. giving XP for gold in a game where you want players to delve into dungeons as efficiently as possible). In the case of a licensed property, one possible set of desired player actions revolves around recreating the feel, character, and stories of the property. That's where a lot of people find that the more traditional RPG rules in EotE fall down. There are definitely valid explanations/defenses for gear porn ("they actually do recreate the theme I'm going for" in the case of cyberpunk, or even just "this is the way Star Wars RPGs have always done it, and that's an actively enjoyable thing for me"), but faithfulness to the themes of Star Wars movies isn't really one of them IMO.
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