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Lichtenstein posted:It's such a fuzzy feeling to be offhandedly mentioned as a good GM (even if you know too well you're really more of a mixed bag). Agreed. Once at a party one of my friends (who was admittedly a bit inebriated) told me that I was, "like, the best GM ever, dude," and it felt really nice. Serf posted:In my current Strike game the PCs did a bad thing and caught the attention of some time gods that started summoning alternate universe versions of the PCs to fight them. I just statted them out as stooges, and after the fight went on longer than I anticipated and I ran out of standard alt-universe tropes the players started describing what each new version looked like. Can confirm that is way more fun for them. Incidentally, pretty much this happened in the Strike! campaign I ran that inspired the above sentiment in my friend. However, instead of deciding to fight aganst their alternate timeline dopplegangers, they decided to throw a huge party for all of their simulacra from all the different realities and timelines.
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Feb 20, 2017 15:24
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Parkreiner posted:EoD's setting is an apocalyptic sci-fantasy kind of thing influenced by '80s cartoons and video games (I believe one piece of character creation advice is "visualize what your character would look like as an action figure"), where Satan's spaceship crashes into a technomagical civilization and wreaks such massive havoc that large masses of the population surrender outright in hopes of surviving. Space Satan's porcelain-masked psychedelic-drug-addicted minions battle the rebel alliance of Glitter Boy pilots, cyberwizards, androids, and psychic kung-fu priests, while the native shamanic minotaur population who predate the planet's human settlement decide now is a great time to wipe out all the colonists while they're having their civil war. All three factions are available as PC fodder, but the rebel alliance has the most class options (and you should definitely avoid mixed-faction games). And it just drops this on you one bit at a time, and you learn to accept the world as you go. Tabletop games have a hard time doing this without hashing out an extended rationale and a lengthy setting history. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 16:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:Unironically yes Twilight 2000 is a very 2017 game. I mean, even if you take Twilight as-is, you're still going to be traipsing around Poland after a Russian invasion and the use of nuclear weapons, so ... that's 100% plausible.
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Feb 20, 2017 17:39
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Rockopolis posted:Ahem, a Soviet Invasion. I guess it's set in the alt-timeline where Putin waxed Yeltsin, and now the EU is radioactive and America has broken down into MilGov and CivGov. So, two months from now? 'Cept the Yeltsin part?
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Feb 20, 2017 18:14
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Starjammer just released. So how  is it?Edit: Oh, that isn't Starfinder. Guess that isn't out yet. Covok fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 20:38
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Halloween Jack posted:Finally got a chance to look over Empire of Dust. I really like the way it mixes high fantasy and space opera, but in a way that's not typical of tabletop games. It reminds me a lot more of 80s-90s Japanese CRPGs, like the early Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy games, where the world has kingdoms, knights, wizards, and monsters, but also spaceships, robots, and rayguns. And then it turns out to have a mystical cosmology where angels and demons and souls are definitely real. The Devil Himself being statted up as the explicit end boss (with God as optional hidden boss?) also strongly fits into that vibe.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:42
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Covok posted:Starjammer just released. So how There is also Mindjammer to add to the confusion
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Feb 20, 2017 21:05
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Well damnit, now I'm interested but IPR is doing that thing again where for being a store they're surprisingly hard to access. Keep getting a 503 error.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:17
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Parkreiner posted:The Devil Himself being statted up as the explicit end boss (with God as optional hidden boss?) also strongly fits into that vibe. With JRPGs, God is always secretly the Devil, or just some cosmic douchebag.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:22
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Halloween Jack posted:Totally. The plot of the Phantasy Star tetralogy is basically that God beat the Devil and then hosed off someplace, so the Devil comes around every millennium to gently caress things up by possessing whoever is in charge. In Dragon Quest 7 the devil impersonates him but when you meet the real deal he's just a chill old fat dude who does a friendly spar with you
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Feb 20, 2017 22:39
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Yesterday I heard about a guy running an FFG Star Wars game for 12 people. Holy poo poo.
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Feb 21, 2017 12:11
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Serf posted:Yesterday I heard about a guy running an FFG Star Wars game for 12 people. Holy poo poo. Is that in Madison, WI? One of my friends runs an FFG SW game there that has about that many people. I think it may have more, actually. He's got assistant GMs, the way I understand it.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:29
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some loving LIAR posted:Is that in Madison, WI? One of my friends runs an FFG SW game there that has about that many people. I think it may have more, actually. He's got assistant GMs, the way I understand it. Nah, it's up in Athens, GA. Apparently they start when 4 players show up and just bring in the rest of the characters as the players drift in. No assistant GMs or anything, just madness. He also runs Werewolf for the same group apparently. I had a tough time keeping up with just 6 people. Twelve would be impossible.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:35
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Yeah I keep a hard cap of 4 players when I run because the last time I tried to have more than that it just fell to poo poo. I can't even imagine running for twelve people; trying to get a word in edgewise would be like drilling for oil.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:53
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That got me thinking: 1. Are there any games that allow or expect you to play more than one character at a time? 2. Has anyone ever tried to deliberately play a game where a player controlled more than one character at a time, even for a game that didn't specifically support it?
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Feb 21, 2017 14:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:That got me thinking: I haven't played them, but doesn't DCC expect you to come up with a couple of initial characters that will get whittled down to probably just one by the end of the first adventure? And Ars Magica has you play as more than one character iirc but I'm not sure you play as them concurrently.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:59
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I once ran a convention game with 10 people because I was young and stupid. I only brought enough pregens for 5 (and that's what the event was booked as) but because I was young and stupid and the convention organizers were goddamn idiots I had 10 people in what was fortunately just a standard bug hunt module I'd written myself the previous month. It was still a disaster because I barely had enough time to vet characters (over half of them brought their own characters), getting a word in edgewise was hard enough, and it turned out my monster balancing skills were not nearly good enough to scale encounters properly. That was ages ago (we were playing AD&D2e and it was the current edition), and I won't run convention games any more.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:00
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Serf posted:I haven't played them, but doesn't DCC expect you to come up with a couple of initial characters that will get whittled down to probably just one by the end of the first adventure? DCC's funnel has you start with four level-0 characters per player, and yes the last man standing is the one who gets to level 1 and gets a class (and gets a name), but it's less about playing them concurrently and more about having replacements on the deck available because they're expected to die like flies in a deathtrap dungeon.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:02
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Apocalypse World for one has an advancement option where instead of advancing your character you get to make a new character and now get to play two characters (subject to some limitations as to how your characters may interact with each other).
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Feb 21, 2017 15:04
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Serf posted:I haven't played them, but doesn't DCC expect you to come up with a couple of initial characters that will get whittled down to probably just one by the end of the first adventure? And Ars Magica has you play as more than one character iirc but I'm not sure you play as them concurrently. DCC starts with a meatgrinder and whoever survives becomes your character, but I don't remember you playing them concurrently. I could be wrong though. Ars Magica you definitely do not play multiple characters at the same time outside of maybe some RP interactions, Wizard play and follower play are completely separate things. If you're a wizard you're not also playing a non-wizard, the other PCs might be followers, but you never played both at once. Another game that had you come up with multiple characters at the start was the original Dark Sun, which used a Character Tree concept. Since healing was hard to come by and the game was especially hard due to a scarcity of magic items, you were expected to let some characters in your party rest while they teamed up with another character from your tree. Resurrection magic was also nonexistent so the tree let you keep a current leveled dude around who the other PCs already knew in case of death.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:07
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Kwyndig posted:Another game that had you come up with multiple characters at the start was the original Dark Sun, which used a Character Tree concept. Since healing was hard to come by and the game was especially hard due to a scarcity of magic items, you were expected to let some characters in your party rest while they teamed up with another character from your tree. Resurrection magic was also nonexistent so the tree let you keep a current leveled dude around who the other PCs already knew in case of death. I think a stable of characters is an interesting conceit, particularly if you observe something like "realistic" time passage and healing rates, so you play Bob the Mage while his brother Rob the Fighter is in the hospital sleeping off a week's worth of kobold stab wounds.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:DCC's funnel has you start with four level-0 characters per player, and yes the last man standing is the one who gets to level 1 and gets a class (and gets a name), but it's less about playing them concurrently and more about having replacements on the deck available because they're expected to die like flies in a deathtrap dungeon. I only ran a DCC funnel game once but I had all of the characters go concurrently. It didn't hurt too much because part of the recommended funnel design is "set encounter difficulty to kill 50% of the group each time", so you get down to manageable numbers quickly.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:10
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*crying* I wanna play Ars Magica
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Feb 21, 2017 15:11
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some loving LIAR posted:I only ran a DCC funnel game once but I had all of the characters go concurrently. It didn't hurt too much because part of the recommended funnel design is "set encounter difficulty to kill 50% of the group each time", so you get down to manageable numbers quickly. Yeah this is how it was done in the APs I listened to. Seems to make more sense and is more fun that way.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:That got me thinking: 3.5/Pathfinder's treatment of the Leadership feat fits number 1 above. By 3.5 it had degenerated straight up into "have a second character with some mild pretenses."
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Feb 21, 2017 15:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:1. Are there any games that allow or expect you to play more than one character at a time? This sounded to me like something an author would recommend without actually playtesting it. But sure enough, the Example of Play is a story where the party is going to get betrayed and ambushed, and every player knows it's going to happen because one is the GM, one is GMing a related subplot, and one is playing the NPC who will betray the party. Vaya con dios, if that's your thing.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:29
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Arivia posted:3.5/Pathfinder's treatment of the Leadership feat fits number 1 above. By 3.5 it had degenerated straight up into "have a second character with some mild pretenses." Have you played in a game where Leadership was allowed and used in earnest? What was that like? A lot of the time I hear to not use Leadership entirely, or limit it to just "I have a background crafter apprentice" because of the balance issues (and the relative complexity of building and maintaining a second 3e character)
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Feb 21, 2017 15:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:That got me thinking: There's an apparently quite popular campaign supplement for old WEG d6 Star Wars that had the players not only playing multiple characters concurrently over the course of the campaign, but (IIRC) they also had to play specific characters and not player-generated ones. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called but I vaguely remember some goon running it in an FFG Star Wars conversion as a Skype game a couple years ago.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:40
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Drone posted:There's an apparently quite popular campaign supplement for old WEG d6 Star Wars that had the players not only playing multiple characters concurrently over the course of the campaign, but (IIRC) they also had to play specific characters and not player-generated ones. The DarkStryder Campaign is what you're meaning I think. @Gradenko: Not really, and for all the aforementioned reasons. It might be manageable as an exotic mount or something but otherwise I wouldn't touch that at all.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:Have you played in a game where Leadership was allowed and used in earnest? What was that like?
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Feb 21, 2017 15:59
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Is this the thread to post in if I'm weighing between picking up one of three different setting's core rulebooks, or is there a more appropriate one? I saw the "what system should I use" but that seems more for established GMs that have a campaign in mind.
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Feb 21, 2017 16:17
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Yeah, I ran my funnel as "mob of peasants" instead of Paranoia-Clone style. You had one 'default' character that was doing stuff if you didn't specify anyone else, but your other characters were there if you needed them. It works okay either way, I think, with the mob having more survivors in the end.
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Feb 21, 2017 16:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:That got me thinking: In Heroquest, it's trivial to take companions. Simple followers or retainers are are represented on your character sheet by one ability (e.g. "Squad of Stormtroopers 17W"), while full companions have three or more. It's really handy for making leader type characters.
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Feb 21, 2017 16:32
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:Is this the thread to post in if I'm weighing between picking up one of three different setting's core rulebooks, or is there a more appropriate one? I saw the "what system should I use" but that seems more for established GMs that have a campaign in mind. 
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Feb 21, 2017 16:33
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Fair enough! So, the how's and when's and even the if's as to whether or not any of these games would ever be played is not yet decided, and I've never run a campaign before. But whatever, I want to pick up an RPG core rulebook if only to look through it, and these are the ones I'm looking through. It's been 5+ years since I've played an RPG (I've done D&D 3.5 (I think), Deadlands, and a homebrew-ish WoD) and I was never that heavy into them, so my descriptions of things is going to be very surface-level. Anyway, the three I'm looking at are: Star Wars: Edge of the Empire - I like the setting, I like that it's light on Force-stuff, and I really like the descriptions I've read of how the success/failure + advantage/disadvantages stuff works. Like a player wants to jump from a floating platform to grab hold of a droid flying nearby, but he fails. Except he got a ton of advantages, so the GM decides that he missed the droid, but landed in the netting of a passing garbage droid that was flying by beneath the target. 7th Sea: 2nd Edition - Again, I like the setting quite a bit. It sounds like everyone is intentionally wearing plot-armor like the protagonist of a swashbuckling film which is neat - just owning the idea of the PCs being special compared to everyday people. I'm not sure how appealing this would be for friends who'd potentially be players, and the risks and raises sound like they'd potentially be hard to balance for? Blades in the Dark - I read this like it's a heist movie set in a world like Thief or Dishonored, and everyone plays a different kind of thief. People mention Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards a lot in terms of the feel and that also appeals. I know very little about the actual mechanics though.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:38
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The FFG Star Wars books are also Grade A Core Rulebook material, if you're looking for something to look through. They are big and heavy with good paper stock and excellent artwork 
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Feb 21, 2017 17:46
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Drone posted:The FFG Star Wars books are also Grade A Core Rulebook material, if you're looking for something to look through. They are big and heavy with good paper stock and excellent artwork Seconding this. I don't like the actual game itself, but the book is a fantastic product. I'm about halfway through the final Blades in the Dark release, but from what I've seen so far I like it. At first I was resistant to how rigidly-defined the different phases of the session are and the combat took a little while to click with me, but once it did I can see myself running it. No matter what happens I am totally gonna steal the clock mechanic for every game I run from now on. I have no experience with 7th Sea, but I'm sure there are plenty of people here who do.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:54
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If you're interested in actually running FFG Star Wars, you might want to start with Age of Rebellion instead. It's got a more concrete direction to it, what with the players presumably being part of the rebel hierarchy. That said, Edge is good too if you're perfectly down with assembling a more random group of rogues for vague reasons. 7th Sea 2e is pretty good. Like FFG RPGs, it's a very pretty and readable book. It's a much more traditional sort of system than the other two. It fixes the most glaring problems that first edition had, but there are still some "well it feels right" kind of design decisions that don't work out so well for everyone. Don't let that discourage you, though, it's still pretty solid. Blades is super great! It's very story-gamey, even more so than FFG Star Wars, and also much lighter on the mechanics. It might be a better fit if you think you might end up starting a game with total newcomers, since the simpler mechanics and playbook approach can be helpful. On the other hand, if it's most likely just going to be for casual reading, I think 7th Sea would be the best choice. It's got more world-building/setting stuff going on than either of the other two. FFG Star Wars comes in as a close second for this, and Blades' setting stuff is light and short enough it's firmly in third place for just casual reading. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 19:02
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Yeah, my only major gripe with 7th Sea is the corruption mechanic. There are some relatively minor issues otherwise but that's the only one that really stands out to me as untenable.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:16
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Haystack posted:In Heroquest, it's trivial to take companions. Simple followers or retainers are are represented on your character sheet by one ability (e.g. "Squad of Stormtroopers 17W"), while full companions have three or more. It's really handy for making leader type characters. Speaking of this and the other excellent feedback, we're having a colleague "going away" day on Thursday, so no KoDP game. Was wondering if people here might be interested, I can try and organise a PbP or a timed game if people can do GMT.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:38
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