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XXVc is a pretty decent game. The setting was a surprisingly gritty version of the Buck Rogers universe, with the solar system divided into multiple planetary and political factions and the oppression of genetically engineered mutants. Kind of a proto-JOVIAN CHRONICLES or an early draft of The Expanse, even though the aesthetics were still jetpacks and bubble helmets and rocket ships. The system, IIRC, was an uninspired AD&D 2E variant. A much better gameline than you'd think. Mike Pondsmith was the main designer.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:07
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FMguru posted:A much better gameline than you'd think. Mike Pondsmith was the main designer.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:46
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Jeff Grubb was involved too, the man who turned Ed Greenwood's insane disconnected notes about brothels into the original Forgotten Realms grey box, which even if you don't like FR you have to admit is a pretty solid product.
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Feb 23, 2017 04:56
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Thing is, from what I can tell, Gamma World and Star Frontiers both had better mechanics than AD&D, and Buck Rogers was basically AD&D.gradenko_2000 posted:Because of the way your rolls start taking penalties as you get progressively more wounded, the game seems to emphasize "alpha strikes" and winning initiative. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 05:04
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Halloween Jack posted:Thing is, from what I can tell, Gamma World and Star Frontiers both had better mechanics than AD&D, and Buck Rogers was basically AD&D. It was 1e-to-2e transitional period AD&D with a percentile skill system bolted on. No one likes it for the system.
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Feb 23, 2017 05:06
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Kwyndig posted:About the only things I remember about them was that the ship combat let you board enemy ships to kill their life support or fight pirate captains. I remember that gold box fondly. Grab a bunch of blind grenades, hope your opponent doesn't have any robots and win initiative. Sailing around the solar system shooting RAM vessels or whatever was the best part.
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Feb 23, 2017 05:23
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Rolemaster was a game where a lot of the tactics were just in how far you could maximize your relevant combat or stealth skills and hope the dice were on your side. Alternately, like many D&D-alikes, you just struggle to survive with a spellcaster long enough that you can turn the system sideways and find the lever that breaks the system, or at least breaks conventional confrontations.
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Feb 23, 2017 05:50
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What would be a good modern system for running XXVc? Fragged Empires?
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Feb 23, 2017 06:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Rolemaster was a game where a lot of the tactics were just in how far you could maximize your relevant combat or stealth skills and hope the dice were on your side. Alternately, like many D&D-alikes, you just struggle to survive with a spellcaster long enough that you can turn the system sideways and find the lever that breaks the system, or at least breaks conventional confrontations. I've played all of 2 sessions of Rolemaster (the DM of the group was into it) and I just remember spending my turn either setting up to backstab enemies, or backstabbing them. And I was playing a Cleric, or something. Of course one of the dudes in our party got a busted femur and the other had "your shield hand is severed" as a result of an attack. The players unanimously walked away from the campaign, after that.
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Feb 23, 2017 06:49
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Did any of you Rolemaster players ever use Shadow World?
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Feb 23, 2017 07:09
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I am looking for a place to provide easy to find information based on my game world to my players in my three games. Images are only for maps, really just need a place to put a bunch of text. I know of Obsidian Portal but is there any other alternative? I was using a Google Doc but it's become too unwieldy with the amount of information available. Thanks!
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Feb 23, 2017 07:10
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Lightning Lord posted:Did any of you Rolemaster players ever use Shadow World? I ran a Shadow World game for about a year. This pales in comparison to my generic fantasy homebrew Rolemaster game that ran for eight years.
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Feb 23, 2017 08:08
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P.d0t posted:I've played all of 2 sessions of Rolemaster (the DM of the group was into it) and I just remember spending my turn either setting up to backstab enemies, or backstabbing them. And I was playing a Cleric, or something. And here I am thinking that actually sounds cool in its own way if you knew going in that it was going to be like that.
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Feb 23, 2017 08:19
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Lightning Lord posted:Jeff Grubb was involved too, the man who turned Ed Greenwood's insane disconnected notes about brothels into the original Forgotten Realms grey box, which even if you don't like FR you have to admit is a pretty solid product. I think that's not giving Ed enough credit. Grubb's contributions were largely collation and editing. Both he and Karen Martin say in their notes in the DM's Sourcebook that things were pretty fully formed when TSR received Ed's packages. The drafts Ed sent in are shown in Elminster's Forgotten Realms, and they are coherent outlines and overviews, not disconnected notes focusing on brothels. The problem with creating the Old Gray Box was that Ed had sent them so much, and paring was a lot of what Jeff Grubb had to do. Remember prior to the FR Campaign Set TSR had produced the World of Greyhawk products, which were very much written to size. Gygax was writing new content just to hit his page count. For the Realms they had so much more they were planning a newsletter of just gazetteer additions!
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Feb 23, 2017 08:30
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Lightning Lord posted:What would be a good modern system for running XXVc? Fragged Empires? One of the Sci-fi oriented OSR systems could probably handle it fairly well, as a bonus it'd be easier to convert stuff between the XXVC system and the new one
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Feb 23, 2017 10:35
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Related to Rolemaster chat, Rolemaster (well, MERP, which was basically Rolemaster-lite) ws the game I started with. Even though me and my friends quickly came to the realization that it was too involved and detailed for us to handle I still have fond memories of it. Admittedly we played it very fast and loose, simply using "I go, you go" initiative and making it so that spellcasters could cast spells above their level provided they had the spellpoints for it (because otherwise spellcasters were limited to boiling water at first level and the advancement system heavily favored martial characters at low levels). I still have a sort of a weird urge to go back to it, and I guess Rolemaster had a permanent effect on me in the sense that even though I've moved on to much simpler systems games with really involved critical hit charts still appeal to me on some level (DCC and Hackmaster are both examples of game that have the simple D&D core but with some Rolemaster-like elements to them and I really want to play both of them at some point). Incidentally, I was reading Ron Edwards' original fantasy heartbreaker article a while ago and it made the point that a lot of 90s fantasy RPGs had this strange idea of "violence=realism," and I think Rolemaster sort of started that. When I started gaming I thought that "Of course Rolemaster is the most realistic system, get a load of all these specific and gory ways in which you can die" and since D&D lacked any such system it was obviously a dumb nerdgame for stupid babies. e: Does Shadow of the Demon Lord have critical hit charts? I've been meaning to check that game out because it sounds like the sort of thing my friends might like (they're really into WFRP 2e) and I've heard some good things about it.
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Feb 23, 2017 10:43
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Ratpick posted:Incidentally, I was reading Ron Edwards' original fantasy heartbreaker article a while ago and it made the point that a lot of 90s fantasy RPGs had this strange idea of "violence=realism," and I think Rolemaster sort of started that. When I started gaming I thought that "Of course Rolemaster is the most realistic system, get a load of all these specific and gory ways in which you can die" and since D&D lacked any such system it was obviously a dumb nerdgame for stupid babies. There was a discussion in the TG KS thread about how we might see another "wave" of heartbreakers in the sense that the hobby is getting a lot of new blood into it, but also people who don't have any sort of connection to everything that the hobby already had to go through in the last 30 years, and so every now and then I see someone post about how they either want to, or have already homebrewed up a method for, wounds and crippling injuries in their D&D 5e game. We might not see someone try to publish a 2017 version of Arduin, but it's probably going to end up as a PDF or a Google Doc somewhere. Ratpick posted:e: Does Shadow of the Demon Lord have critical hit charts? I've been meaning to check that game out because it sounds like the sort of thing my friends might like (they're really into WFRP 2e) and I've heard some good things about it. The Forbidden Rules splatbook (which is basically Unearthed Arcana for SOTDL) does have a 3d6 Critical Hit chart, with the 18 result being "The target takes damage equal to its health" In an interesting bit of design, the core rules don't even recognize "critical hits" or "critical/automatic success" at all. The word "critical" never even appears in the book.
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Feb 23, 2017 11:32
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Yeah, the closest it's got is called shots, which is mostly like "Make a roll with a bane, if you hit, they get a bane to do things regarding the area you targeted" One of the Master Paths has that 18+ crit result as essentially an at-will class ability to anything with 20 health or less that's within melee range. (The Death Dealer's Mountain of corpses level 10 talent. AKA "gently caress all these mooks in particular" ) unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 11:43
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drrockso20 posted:One of the Sci-fi oriented OSR systems could probably handle it fairly well, as a bonus it'd be easier to convert stuff between the XXVC system and the new one I'm more interested in the setting itself than the rules (especially since the spaceship stuff was pretty lackluster) so I was gonna convert to any good system but yeah I guess if I can do near 1:1 conversions and still have a solid base to look at that would be cool. Do you have any suggestions beyond SWN? Arivia posted:I think that's not giving Ed enough credit. Grubb's contributions were largely collation and editing. Both he and Karen Martin say in their notes in the DM's Sourcebook that things were pretty fully formed when TSR received Ed's packages. The drafts Ed sent in are shown in Elminster's Forgotten Realms, and they are coherent outlines and overviews, not disconnected notes focusing on brothels. Yeah, I was exaggerating for hyperbole and because of my affinity for Jeff Grubb. Hey I think the first barrage of good boxed sets/setting books that formed the early FR product line spun out of those notes too right? Like Waterdeep and the North with the Keith Parkinson cover of the Xanathar being a creep Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 23, 2017 11:46
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unseenlibrarian posted:One of the Master Paths has that 18+ crit result as essentially an at-will class ability to anything with 20 health or less that's within melee range. (The Death Dealer's Mountain of corpses level 10 talent. AKA "gently caress all these mooks in particular" ) That sounds lot like one of the D&D 5e Fighter abilities that got dropped in one of the close-to-release playtest packets: they could just straight-up drop a dude if they were at 20 HP or less.
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Feb 23, 2017 11:59
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Basically everything in the FR1-16 line tracks back to Ed's original idea of the setting as presented to TSR. The exception is the Moonshaes, which were Douglas Niles' own product that was crowbarred into the setting by TSR. Now, you're right that some of it comes directly from Ed - FR1 Waterdeep and the North is basically his Waterdeep notes that didn't fit in the Campaign Set. Beyond that freelancers were given the relevant notes for their part and left to design a product, with varying success. Jennell Jaquays' great Savage Frontier was Ed's notes + reusing some work she had done for I think a Judges' Guild product + original design. Scott Bennie's Old Empires was pretty much his own invention, with TSR asking for an Egypt area. (Ed's notes on the region were pretty sparse, as he largely used it as an exotic place for NPCs to come from.)
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Feb 23, 2017 12:00
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I wonder how likely a purist Grey Box + FR1-16 campaign would be to change the mind of someone who likes D&D or "D&D fantasy" but doesn't dig the Forgotten Realms because they view it as Elminister nutting on their faces while gods punch each other out and nothing they do matters because a novel will retcon it anyway? I'm sure people like that are out there. I've been working on and off on sword & sorcery Forgotten Realms, mostly for use with Barbarians of Lemuria and Crypts & Things. Pretty much I make the gods distant and unknowable and priests that have magic abilities are wizards, like in Conan. Also the factions aren't as black and white good and evil. Based on what little I've run it's a great way to introduce people who've played like Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate who aren't familiar with the sword & sorcery genre to it. That Old Tree posted:I ran a Shadow World game for about a year. What did you think about the setting? Do you think it would be worthwhile converted for use for another system?
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Feb 23, 2017 12:10
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Lightning Lord posted:I wonder how likely a purist Grey Box + FR1-16 campaign would be to change the mind of someone who likes D&D or "D&D fantasy" but doesn't dig the Forgotten Realms because they view it as Elminister nutting on their faces while gods punch each other out and nothing they do matters because a novel will retcon it anyway? I'm sure people like that are out there.  But yeah that's actually a great idea, I'd play it in a heartbeat.
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Feb 23, 2017 12:17
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My Uncle had one of the boxed sets that focused on the Dalelands. I remember thinking it sounded like a neat place to visit as a kid. I don't know how it would hold up to an adult, though.
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Feb 23, 2017 13:00
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LatwPIAT posted:I'm curious now, got a link to the Spacemaster Mass Effect hack? I tried to Google it but got nothing useful. It doesn't sound like something I'd like to play (having a love-hate relationship with Mass Effect and not having played Spacemaster) but I'd like to see how it's put together. Turn's out this was homebrewed by our GM. He gave me the okay to share it. Spacemaster: Mass Effect
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Feb 23, 2017 13:32
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Lightning Lord posted:I wonder how likely a purist Grey Box + FR1-16 campaign would be to change the mind of someone who likes D&D or "D&D fantasy" but doesn't dig the Forgotten Realms because they view it as Elminister nutting on their faces while gods punch each other out and nothing they do matters because a novel will retcon it anyway? I'm sure people like that are out there. For me I don't like Forgotten Realms because pretty much everything in it is done better and/or more interestingly by other settings, even the things it came up with originally(also most things or places in FR are terribly named in a manner that I am literally incapable of remembering, Neverwinter is literally the only location in the setting that I can consistently remember the name of)
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Feb 23, 2017 13:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Forbidden Rules splatbook (which is basically Unearthed Arcana for SOTDL) does have a 3d6 Critical Hit chart, with the 18 result being "The target takes damage equal to its health" This was one thing that threw me off at first about the system because d20 games have ingrained the critical hit mechanic in my mind. There are some abilities that trigger on a 20+ and if you exceed the target number by 5, but those are spread out and generally just provide an additional effect and not damage. I'm not sure if I like it, because it does take away one of the better things in D&D, which is the sense of excitement you get when you roll a 20. (I need to get back to my SotDL F&F, but between job hunting, running 2 games and life in general being massively hosed it's hard to find the time to write)
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Feb 23, 2017 13:58
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:I am looking for a place to provide easy to find information based on my game world to my players in my three games. Images are only for maps, really just need a place to put a bunch of text. I know of Obsidian Portal but is there any other alternative? I was using a Google Doc but it's become too unwieldy with the amount of information available. You can save it to the cloud and share it from there. If you have GM notes, you can password protect those sections.
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Feb 23, 2017 14:04
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All WoTC settings suck rear end except Eberron and Dark Sun
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Feb 23, 2017 14:08
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Plutonis posted:All WoTC settings suck rear end except Eberron and Dark Sun Points of Light was pretty good, as was what little we got of the Sundered Empire/God War setting(it'll never happen, but I would pay good money for a dedicated setting book for it)
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Feb 23, 2017 14:11
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Plutonis posted:All WoTC settings suck rear end except Eberron and Dark Sun
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Feb 23, 2017 14:17
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drrockso20 posted:Points of Light was pretty good, as was what little we got of the Sundered Empire/God War setting(it'll never happen, but I would pay good money for a dedicated setting book for it) I found it too generic still. I just want something kind of original!
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Feb 23, 2017 14:18
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Serf posted:This was one thing that threw me off at first about the system because d20 games have ingrained the critical hit mechanic in my mind. There are some abilities that trigger on a 20+ and if you exceed the target number by 5, but those are spread out and generally just provide an additional effect and not damage. I'm not sure if I like it, because it does take away one of the better things in D&D, which is the sense of excitement you get when you roll a 20. To be clear, I think it's good design, because we've known for years that the 5% increments on a d20 are far too large to assign critical hit or conversely critical failure without drastically changing the tone of the game, and because a lot of the time D&D is already structured that rolling a 20 is going to be a success or a hit anyway. Like, if you go back to OD&D, a level 1 character attacking an AC 2 target would need to roll a 17. So a 20 always hits by implication. And if a 20 isn't going to succeed in the first place, why are you still letting the character roll?
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Feb 23, 2017 14:20
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Oh yeah Spelljammer was cool
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Feb 23, 2017 14:21
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gradenko_2000 posted:To be clear, I think it's good design, because we've known for years that the 5% increments on a d20 are far too large to assign critical hit or conversely critical failure without drastically changing the tone of the game, and because a lot of the time D&D is already structured that rolling a 20 is going to be a success or a hit anyway. This is the part that always got to me about critical hit/autosuccess rules. It encourages an attitude of "if I just get lucky enough, I can do literally anything" which is fine for some games, but it's wildly against tone for almost all of the default settings of D&D. I also hate 1 is always a miss rule for a similar reason, because a flat 5% chance of failure is just too high. I prefer being able to adjust the chance of failure from encounter to encounter with modifiers, and D&D only lets me add on to that 5%, never subtract from it.
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Feb 23, 2017 14:29
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drrockso20 posted:Points of Light was pretty good, as was what little we got of the Sundered Empire/God War setting(it'll never happen, but I would pay good money for a dedicated setting book for it) Points of Light is basically 90% of the Forgotten Realms anyway. And I think (obviously) that the 1e Realms stands up pretty well today. A couple OSR people have tried it and it works well.
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Feb 23, 2017 14:45
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Lightning Lord posted:What did you think about the setting? Do you think it would be worthwhile converted for use for another system? I guess it's the equivalent of an Extruded Fantasy Content series of giant brick-like paper novels that were so popular in the 1990s. Lots of words, lots of details, none of which are particularly interesting. One weird final detail - because of a cross-publishing agreement with Hero Games, most of the products are dual-statted for Fantasy Hero/Champions.
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Feb 23, 2017 15:32
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ImpactVector posted:OneNote is a decent way to organize a bunch of notes. I've got one set up for my Fate game that has a bunch of rules pasted in as images from the PDF, as well as my AW-style fronts, PC info, etc. Hah, I had never thought of that! A good idea! Thanks!
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Feb 23, 2017 16:00
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:I am looking for a place to provide easy to find information based on my game world to my players in my three games. Images are only for maps, really just need a place to put a bunch of text. I know of Obsidian Portal but is there any other alternative? I was using a Google Doc but it's become too unwieldy with the amount of information available. If you've got the tech chops, setting up a wiki would be a great option.
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Feb 23, 2017 17:14
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Lightning Lord posted:What did you think about the setting? Do you think it would be worthwhile converted for use for another system?  It's hard to say. What kind of conversion work are you looking for? Most of the setting is pretty standard fantasy on its face. Then you start getting into the weird techno-fantasy world-spanning backstory and it comes off very early old school. (Every old fantasy game has spaceships in it, it seems.) Like I can't remember what the special name for Shadow World's orcs are, but when it comes down to it they're just orcs. I think for the most part "converting" it to say an OSR game will just involve playing the OSR game, but make sure your dwarves have names like "Irgaak." What kind of thing are you looking to do?
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Feb 23, 2017 17:28
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