|
Kwyndig posted:Speaking of, are there any particularly good "unfinished" rules out there that aren't fantasy based? Seems like everybody only ever does fantasy homebrew. Lasers & Feelings?
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 19:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Kwyndig posted:Speaking of, are there any particularly good "unfinished" rules out there that aren't fantasy based? Seems like everybody only ever does fantasy homebrew. John Harper's WW2 game is technically complete enough to run if you're familiar with how pbta games work, and it's good for what is there, but it's clearly unfinished
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 22:58
|
|
|
Does anyone have a link to that thing that describes running a JoJo's Bizzare Adventure game in Fate?
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
The Deleter posted:Does anyone have a link to that thing that describes running a JoJo's Bizzare Adventure game in Fate? http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2016/12/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-137-jojos-compelled-aspect/
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
The main benevolent use of metaplot as a tool is to provide explanations for ongoing campaigns for major alterations between editions and other major alterations to a game. Not that such is even necessary, but that's about the only time I can think of it being useful. Mostly, it ends up being a mess even when it's used that way (the revised World of Darkness books come to mind), but that's the only main use I can think of it as a game design tool and not just a marketing gimmick.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 04:10
|
|
|
Two kinds of snails have been named after FR goddesses: https://m.phys.org/news/2017-02-species-science-dungeons-dragons-character.html 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 07:23
|
|
|
How much effort would go into running a Mass Effect game using Stars Without Number? And how would it work? It feels like the "background" metacampaign stuff from SWN would fit pretty perfectly to Mass Effect -- you could base it in a sector with a cool name at the very edge of Citadel space, where maybe only one system has a mass relay connection to the rest of the network, and the rest of the systems need to be explored by slowboating around with I saw someone's homebrew document for running ME in SWN on Reddit a bit ago, but it seemed like they introduced far more crunch than is really necessary (replaced/augmented the three core SWN character classes with individual warrior/psychic archetypes that corresponded to each class in the video game). Beyond that it seems like all you'd need to do is stat up the other Council races and then maybe rename some weapons to sound more Mass Effect-y. Edit: also found this guide for running ME in SWN written by some dude based on feedback from Kevin Crawford. I've not yet had the chance to play with SWN so I'm not sure how good most of this looks, but if it came straight from the horse's mouth for the most part, it's probably not bad. Drone fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Feb 27, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 08:28
|
|
|
Drone posted:How much effort would go into running a Mass Effect game using Stars Without Number? And how would it work? SWN's mechanics wouldn't really mesh well with Mass Effect's, the latter's psychic rules are really wimpy and ineffective compared to Biotics, and there isn't really a system that meshes up with the various Tech skills from the games either(indeed in my opinion all three classes in SWN are terrible) SWN is basically a crappier version of Classic Traveller clumsily shoved into an OSR framework(it's the one OSR product I own in physical format that I regret buying), if you're going to use an already existing OSR base to modify into Mass Effect, I'd suggest looking at Colonial Troopers instead, or perhaps just start from scratch
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 09:40
|
|
|
My group's preparing to enter a new adventure and half the party is some kind of arcanist while the other is some sort of nature follower. In addition, one of the mages' backstory is "accident at the academy" and one of the naturists' is "my druid grove was killed by alchemist waste from the academy." I'm getting sad we're running a published module, because they're setting themselves up for conflict without prompting and establishing an interesting theme but it's just not what the adventure is about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 12:17
|
|
|
drrockso20 posted:SWN's mechanics wouldn't really mesh well with Mass Effect's, the latter's psychic rules are really wimpy and ineffective compared to Biotics,  You mean the former, not the latter.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 14:26
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:My group's preparing to enter a new adventure and half the party is some kind of arcanist while the other is some sort of nature follower. In addition, one of the mages' backstory is "accident at the academy" and one of the naturists' is "my druid grove was killed by alchemist waste from the academy." I'm getting sad we're running a published module, because they're setting themselves up for conflict without prompting and establishing an interesting theme but it's just not what the adventure is about. it is now
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 15:38
|
|
|
The new Bundle of Holding is up: get all four volumes of Designers & Dragons and a few other books for ~$20.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 20:07
|
|
|
Fuego Fish posted:
Yeah I did 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 20:51
|
|
|
I have come to the conclusion that I don't understand dogs at all. That doesn't have a lot to do with trad games but does explain why my current mental state after two and a half days of looking after my parents dogs is a combination of confusion, anxiety, and total exhaustion. I am not doing this again.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 21:35
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:I have come to the conclusion that I don't understand dogs at all. What's the matter with 'em? LIke, most dogs are cool with a place to sleep that's warm, a meal at the end of the day and a lot of sprinting around in circles.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 21:53
|
|
|
Turns out the barking and the attempts at face licking set off my anxiety something fierce.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 22:03
|
|
|
Yeah, my dog is really chill. I mean, I walk him once a day, let him out a few times besides, and feed him. He hangs out, chases the cat (more vice-versa), lets us know about dangerous joggers and bicyclists outside, and just wants the occasional treat or petting. He's a good dog.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 22:09
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:Turns out the barking and the attempts at face licking set off my anxiety something fierce. Aww, no. That's awful to hear. Just remember, all dogs are good dogs 
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 22:14
|
|
|
I can't own pets anymore because the last time I dog-sat the dog died on my watch (she had contracted some disease a few days prior while at the kennel and it didn't really show itself until it was too late) and it was too traumatizing for me. The idea of having something I'm caring for die is beyond me, made worse because I know I don't make the kinds of money necessary to afford vet bills and quality food.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 22:18
|
|
|
I was devastated when the goldfish someone foisted on me as a surprise birthday gift died. (As a grown-rear end man, mind, I don't mean when I was a kid.) I'd be ruined. On the other hand, I really miss having animals around. It's a moot point at the moment since my apartment doesn't allow pets, but I'm probably moving out next summer...
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2017 22:20
|
|
|
Does metaplot have to be consistent or maintain canonicity? Is that part of the definition of metaplot? Like, spew out the setting and plot hooks as a history book, but with no guarantee that the history is true or accurate. Or just treating the players as wandering temporal anomalies, tearing up linear time with their adventures.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 00:26
|
|
|
I think if it railroads, it's metaplot.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 00:30
|
|
|
So if it doesn't railroad, it's not metaplot?
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 00:35
|
|
|
So, would "King for a Day" be metaplot, or not?
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:Does metaplot have to be consistent or maintain canonicity? Is that part of the definition of metaplot? In general, yes. Metaplot in an RPG as most people typically use it means that there's one true canon storyline winding its way through an RPG, with things like major pivotal events and NPC activities set in stone even before things have gotten to those points yet so you wind up with situations like "Bob the evil vampire wizard teleports away to safety, no you can't kill him, no you can't kill him even THEN, he has a super-special teleport amulet that also makes him invincible to all your players' abilities and LOOK HE HAS TO ESCAPE BECAUSE THE NEXT PART OF THE PLOT REQUIRES IT ALL RIGHT, gently caress." So yeah, by definition metaplot is going to be railroady the same way that a novel is, it's someone else attempting to tell a story using a tabletop roleplaying gameline as a medium.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 00:59
|
|
|
I'm okay with players existing in a world where there are some things so big they can't knock them over. That's not to say that metaplot never sins but I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with the alternative some of you have suggested.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 01:12
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm okay with players existing in a world where there are some things so big they can't knock them over. That's not to say that metaplot never sins but I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with the alternative some of you have suggested. Eh, I'd say this isn't really a metaplot thing precisely. "A game where your weedy 1920's investigator can't singlehandedly beat up Cthulhu and save the world forever" isn't really something I'd ascribe to metaplot so much as genre, tone, shared expectations about what sort of game everyone wants, that sort of thing. Metaplot also isn't always a matter of not being able to knock things over, it can encroach on games in other ways like "this player-facing option got obliterated off the face of the earth because someone did a thing, so now it no longer exists and is instead replaced by this other option in the Revised edition." Or it can wind up retroactively making things super stupid like how the big metaplot reveal in 7th Sea had something to do with ancient aliens out of nowhere, or The Truth behind SLA Industries literally turning out to be "it's all in the mind of an autistic child."
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 01:23
|
|
|
I mean, I'm okay with something along the lines of "Legend of the Five Rings proceeds on the assumption that the players haven't personally murdered the Emperor." If it's basically just a "main" timeline that you can branch off of whenever you want, combined with retroactive explanations for rules changes, I don't see the problem. Doubly so if the designers are deliberately framing it in those terms and you're encouraged to use "What if NPC X didn't do Y because the players merked them" as a jumping off point for alt histories. (This is just an example, I have only the barest familiarity with L5R, if it's actually loaded down with unkillable NPCs who do absolutely everything of importance please don't take this as an endorsement, etc.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 01:30
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:If it's basically just a "main" timeline that you can branch off of whenever you want, combined with retroactive explanations for rules changes, I don't see the problem. I wonder, is there a potential market for "alternate timeline" metaplot splatbooks? As in, here's what happens if your players do murder the Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 01:35
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:I mean, I'm okay with something along the lines of "Legend of the Five Rings proceeds on the assumption that the players haven't personally murdered the Emperor." If it's basically just a "main" timeline that you can branch off of whenever you want, combined with retroactive explanations for rules changes, I don't see the problem. Doubly so if the designers are deliberately framing it in those terms and you're encouraged to use "What if NPC X didn't do Y because the players merked them" as a jumping off point for alt histories. There's a difference between an NPC being unkillable because of contrived reasons due to a hidden plotpoint that's possibly irl years down the game's publishing line and a character being impractically hard to kill for understandable reasons, like being the emperor of Not-Japan. For instance, if you want an excellent example of an unkillable hyper-skilled NPC/game dev-insert with major impact on a game's plot, Bayushi Kachiko is the perfect L5R example e- I think it's also worth pointing out that writing a story out in advance, especially as a GM, is not a metaplot in the regular sense, either.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 01:37
|
|
|
Fuego Fish posted:I wonder, is there a potential market for "alternate timeline" metaplot splatbooks? As in, here's what happens if your players do murder the Emperor. If the gameline has good lore, absolutely. I would have killed for some What If books for Marvel Heroic, for example.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 01:52
|
|
|
Any kind of setting that wants to expand vertically as well as horizontally is going to have some metaplot involved, even if it's just "if City Councilor Whazzat dies then his daughter Foozle won't be around to be mayor in the present day". Like, Gloranthan metaplot isn't super intrusive by WoD or Wick standards, but at the same time there's plenty of published official/semi-official material that assumes certain events happened in a particular way, plenty of NPCs that can't reasonably be opposed, and certain things are more or less guaranteed to happen. And I think it's worthwhile for some settings to go beyond fleshing out splats or adding new locations, to have a context, a history, etc. so long as there's a willingness to play fair on players being able to derail things.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 02:02
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:If the gameline has good lore, absolutely. I would have killed for some What If books for Marvel Heroic, for example. poo poo, it's a pity they discontinued it, then. I'm enough of a comics nerd to have done a lot of that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 02:05
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:it's actually loaded down with unkillable NPCs who do absolutely everything of importance Fuego Fish posted:I wonder, is there a potential market for "alternate timeline" metaplot splatbooks? As in, here's what happens if your players do murder the Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 02:10
|
|
|
Brainiac Five posted:Any kind of setting that wants to expand vertically as well as horizontally is going to have some metaplot involved, even if it's just "if City Councilor Whazzat dies then his daughter Foozle won't be around to be mayor in the present day". Like, Gloranthan metaplot isn't super intrusive by WoD or Wick standards, but at the same time there's plenty of published official/semi-official material that assumes certain events happened in a particular way, plenty of NPCs that can't reasonably be opposed, and certain things are more or less guaranteed to happen. Glorantha also benefits from being in a setting that both allows and encourages players to rewrite reality and myth through their adventures, too.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 02:13
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:Glorantha also benefits from being in a setting that both allows and encourages players to rewrite reality and myth through their adventures, too. Ehhhhh.... that's not always reflected so well in game rules or in the books themselves. I fondly remember the Heroquest 1e example Heroquest ending with 4/6 characters dead, one permanently disabled, and the last severely injured.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 02:16
|
|
|
Brainiac Five posted:Ehhhhh.... that's not always reflected so well in game rules or in the books themselves. I fondly remember the Heroquest 1e example Heroquest ending with 4/6 characters dead, one permanently disabled, and the last severely injured. That's true. It has had a bad habit of "Come on, don't you want to do something rad, punk? Haha gently caress you!" beatdowns, even if the payoff is pretty sweet when it happens
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 02:20
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Eh, I'd say this isn't really a metaplot thing precisely. "A game where your weedy 1920's investigator can't singlehandedly beat up Cthulhu and save the world forever" isn't really something I'd ascribe to metaplot so much as genre, tone, shared expectations about what sort of game everyone wants, that sort of thing. Eh, just hit it with a boat. Cthulhu is a pushover, all great old ones considered. Nuns with Guns posted:e- I think it's also worth pointing out that writing a story out in advance, especially as a GM, is not a metaplot in the regular sense, either. Some of the best advice on this I've ever read came from the Monster of the Week book: plan out what would happen if your players weren't there, doing all the things you'll never predict, and then adjust events accordingly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 04:18
|
|
|
Arivia posted:Not really. Old D&D doesn't need to be emulated, it's good as is. Retroclones are nice for having updated formatting, layout, and editing, but the Rules Cyclopedia is probably the best single D&D product ever, for example. PST posted:Dracula Dossier (Night's Black Agents)
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 04:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Kwyndig posted:I'm actually working on an adventure slash campaign thing with multiple branching paths based on player actions and the further I get into it the harder it's getting to make both meaningful choices and have any kind of plot whatsoever. Now I see why Bioware just half asses it in their mass effect games. Mr.Misfit posted:I´m currently writing a localized sandbox module based around a locale (lets call it a "city") in which different factions with different goals plot against each other, and each faction comes with a storyline (aka a scenario) Depending on which scenario the players go for, another gets locked off, as they will be working directly against the opposing faction. Also, each scenario has to include what happened if the players have already finished or are working on another scenario. With eventualities for EVERY OPTION of ending the other scenarios have. I´ve got 10 scenarios so far. That means about 20 different eventualities for each scene that has connections to another faction due to the way each scenario can end...'barf'. Kwyndig posted:It's a lot of goddamn work with relatively little payoff, is what it is. So here's the thing: every possible branch in a video game has to be scripted and even voice-acted and poo poo. Video games also have a set of expectations among the player base where the player sees every eventuality as their fault--if you take a course of action that results in bad things happening anywhere, the reaction is to get mad, then replay the game so that All of the Good Things happen and None of the Bad Things happen. With metaplot in a published series of RPG sourcebooks, there have to be meaningful events that affect the world, and there's no way to do that while allowing for your campaign to go in a completely different direction. The dirty little secret of a lot of metaplot-heavy 90s games is that they were written more for people who wanted to be fans of the game by buying and memorizing all this Extruded Lore Product because they couldn't find a group to play with. Neither set of constraints applies to your group's campaign. Instead, I suggest you handle ongoing developments the way Apocalypse World suggests: while the PCs are off doing one adventure, think to yourself, "Hey, what is [NPC] probably doing while this is going on? What's happening in [City] right now? How is [Group's Plan] going?" If you want, you can following AW's model of having "countdown clocks" for things you want to be time-sensitive and blow up if the PCs don't get around to dealing with them in time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2017 05:02
|
|