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Atlas Hugged posted:I want to run a game where a bunch of nerdy wizards who were bullied in high school try to wipe out all martial fighters.
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Mar 21, 2017 14:03
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Atlas Hugged posted:I want to run a game where a bunch of nerdy wizards who were bullied in high school try to wipe out all martial fighters. Conversely, a bunch of muscle wizards who were harassed in high school try to wipe out all fighter nerds who try to wave at them ineffectually with their cosplay wands.
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Mar 21, 2017 14:06
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Okay so I've abused the forum search function, and also dug through google, and done a little rule skimming in regards Open Legend. All in all, it's not bad, but it's still got some screwy stuff in there. One of the guys in the Fate and Friends 2016/2017 thread did a short write up late last year, and it comes out looking... almost reasonable but with some definite pitfalls combat apparently being one such stumbling block, and another being general information layout. On the plus side, it's got a good idea that Yawgmoth keeps stating over in the "Experiences" thread, wherein if you're rolling dice, things should happen. Good, bad, good with a twist, whatever, it should happen, and it should be interesting. Similarly, don't wast time rolling for unnecessary trivial crap, you're here to play space/elfgames, not accountantech (you've got battletech campaign rules for that!). But it tries to retain some of the crunch of D&D involving gridmat systems, 5x5 squares, etc, and thus retains a bunch confusion as well, not least because previously (I couldn't easily locate it so I guess it still does) the rules seem to hide how to define the speed of your character, unless you look up a specific feat (I forget which one). This seems like it should be something defined early on (E: the chargen section actually does have an update to cover this, buried in a small paragraph at the end of statpicking). Most of the rules are available free, so there's that, but if you want a PDF/Hardcopy, you still have to shell out for it. On the plus side, if you can hack the crunch (and the occasionally confusing layout/location of rules - although to me it made sense initially, so I guess it gets more wierd later on), the chargen allows for custom character class creation, to a lesser or greater degree, rather than screwing around with fixed classes, so if you like that sort of thing (I do - it's one of the things I like about SWG classic pre-NGE, and about The Secret World, etc in regards CRPGs) then it's got some good points because you can bodge together a custom class. If you prefer fixed classes for whatever reason, then I guess look somewhere else because this isn't going to necessarily be plug'n'play - the game is defined by being narrative focused rather than crunch focused, or so the site says (I guess that makes it a "Fate But" type of game? Can experienced goons confirm?). Apparently people who like to focus agility builds (me again) are basically screwed to a lesser or greater degree in some areas. Of course this has seemed to be a truism in a lot of the elfgames I've played so far, so that's not exactly news to me. It also has exploding dice, so there's that. It's a thing. I haven't played enough tabletop elfgames to make a judgement call on that bit. Some of the stories in the experiences thread made this sound occasionally fun, so I don't really know. There's a free trial game/oneshot on drivethru RPG as well with most of the rules contained in it, which is basically free/pay what you want, so if you're looking to try before you buy (if you bother to buy at all) then there's that as well, which is nice. http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/190330/A-Star-Once-Fallen mcjomar fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 14:39
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Fourth edition for me would be absolutely perfect if I were playing with 4 other copies of myself. They've all got the PHB, they all understand their class absolutely and they have really good knowledge of everything that their character can do and might want to do. Doesn't matter if they're an Avenger or a Verdant Lord, they Know Their Stuff. I love the idea of the combat rules being more specific and also having loads to do regardless of being a wizard who can teleport or a fighter who can suddenly move fast. Unfortunately that's not what or who I play with. The nice thing about 5th is that there's not as much to remember and it's easy for me and the DM (or me if I am the DM) to remind people what they've got. And there's not as much stuff going on with spells and abilities as there is in 4th. I don't want to say beer and pretzels like AoS fans love to go on about here but 5th does feel simpler and not as crunchy. Sure there's loads of other things that I could play with that in mind but everyone knows D&D and I love the Forgotten Realms. It's just so much easier to get buy in.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:29
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There's a guy on the Infinity forums looking for Necromunda Escher Girls to chop up into a unit that has perfectly acceptable models. I don't know much about Necromunda but the reverence you all give it I assume this is an unforgivable sin.
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Mar 21, 2017 18:24
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Butchering the Escher models is a particular kind of sin, because they are some really good characterful figures that have really held up over time.
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Mar 21, 2017 18:32
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They're ok but they suffer from a lot of the problems of models from that era (mushy faces, awkward poses, bizarre proportions). I wouldn't worry too much about cutting them apart unless you're into collecting old miniatures or have a lot of nostalgia for Necromunda.
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Mar 21, 2017 18:41
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Also I could unironically talk about TT RPG design forever mostly because the vast majority of TT RPG designers don't care/don't know/think they know but don't know about it AND half the time if you talk with a TT RPG player they get genuinely upset or dismissive with poo poo like 'oh well the GM can just improvise/ignore/solve it so who cares' when you bring up issues in design and how to fix them.
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Mar 22, 2017 02:19
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Cat Face Joe posted:There's a guy on the Infinity forums looking for Necromunda Escher Girls to chop up into a unit that has perfectly acceptable models. I don't know much about Necromunda but the reverence you all give it I assume this is an unforgivable sin. I used to buy packs of the Diaz sculpted daemonettes off ebay and toss them.
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Mar 22, 2017 03:43
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Taear posted:Fourth edition for me would be absolutely perfect if I were playing with 4 other copies of myself. They've all got the PHB, they all understand their class absolutely and they have really good knowledge of everything that their character can do and might want to do. Doesn't matter if they're an Avenger or a Verdant Lord, they Know Their Stuff. I think thats the big problem is that yeah, D&D has wayyyy too many loving rules for most people, especially those more interested in going into a story but just like AoS stockholm players, people who play D&D don't want to try a system that actively has good rules. D&D 5e is a very rules heavy game especially when you consider how much work you need to do to keep classes on par with eachother.
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Mar 22, 2017 05:41
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Torchlighter posted:Note the the Dungeon Master's Guide for 4e did have a mechanic for improvisation, complete with a damage table: I basically agree with your point, but I'm just gonna nitpick a little and point out that your level 8 rogue should be getting a magic item bonus and possibly other bonuses as well, so unless she's getting the same bonuses on her acrobatics check (probably not), the numbers will be closer. ...This is actually one of my key complaints about D&D, and which 4th edition did improve on but only by a degree, and that's the fact that the actual tactical combat game is centered on piling up and maximizing bonuses which are a pain in the rear end to keep track of. Not just your own character's various bonuses for items and skills and feats etc. but also circumstantial bonuses, buffs from allies, etc. You are rolling a flat D20 with a target to hit and every single +1 you can add gets you another 5% less likely to have your turn - and therefore your main or possibly only contribution to the game for the next ten minutes - be a "you missed. Next up!" So the advice to the GM for how to deal with unexpected or improvised attacks is never going to result in something as good as, much less better than, what the character and his or her allies can stack up using the abilities they've already accumulated. It can't be, because if it did, the players would be incentivized to stop engaging with the game's printed mechanics and just improvise something in every turn of every encounter, and at that point, why bother with all the poo poo you bought into to play D&D? Why buy splatbooks and dredge for the best magic item synergies and carefully memorize the best buffs for the expected damage types of the next day's adventuring, ad nauseum, if you can instead improvise something and get the GM to give you an attack that is just as good or better? So the system disincentivizes combat improv specifically because failing to do so would disincentivize the actual game. This is not a game about improvising in combat. 4th edition made combat sufficiently interesting (and variable and challenging in a solving-a-puzzle sense rather than a try-to-roll-higher sense) that playing it, I didn't feel as though you necessarily had to get bored with sticking to the powers and options on your character sheet. But it could have been a much better game if as much attention and care was put into rules to support and encourage noncombat adventuring.
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Mar 22, 2017 06:48
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I liked 4e because being a warlord was cool as heck coming from 3.5e where I was basically cleric with multiple persistent buffs. The idea that I could do stuff with a fighting class that was more than "hit them over and over again" was awesome in those first few sessions.
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Mar 22, 2017 07:02
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kingcom posted:I think thats the big problem is that yeah, D&D has wayyyy too many loving rules for most people, especially those more interested in going into a story but just like AoS stockholm players, people who play D&D don't want to try a system that actively has good rules. D&D 5e is a very rules heavy game especially when you consider how much work you need to do to keep classes on par with eachother. Yeah this is why B/X is a good option as it doesn't actually have many rules. 3.5 has all the rules fiddliness of 4E and none of the advantages
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Mar 22, 2017 07:04
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kingcom posted:I think thats the big problem is that yeah, D&D has wayyyy too many loving rules for most people, especially those more interested in going into a story but just like AoS stockholm players, people who play D&D don't want to try a system that actively has good rules. D&D 5e is a very rules heavy game especially when you consider how much work you need to do to keep classes on par with eachother. I look at it the other way. People should go into D&D expecting a very specific set of crunchy rules concepts that have stayed mostly the same for decades. If that isn't what they want, as players or gms, they should play something else. The game as it is at the table is fun. It isn't a great ruleset for player driven storytelling, but those exist and people looking for that should play them. 5e especially has been much better about limiting the bonus stacking and making it less possible to simply build a broken character from two dozen sourcebooks, as was the 3.5 way carried over into Pathfinder.
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Mar 22, 2017 11:15
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Liquid Communism posted:The game as it is at the table is fun.
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Mar 22, 2017 12:03
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For my part I figure RPGs are like any toolbox - a different tool for a different task, yes? Some tools are great for RPGs that focus on great storytelling, and are all about the RP part of RPG - I hear both on these boards and elsewhere that Fate is the current "best" (generally speaking) for this? Is this correct? What is the breakdown for this area? How is it valued? What parts are objective, what parts are subjective for enjoyment? Others seem like they're best described as "a wargamers RPG"? So storytelling via the medium of wargaming, rather than straight up roleplaying? If DnD is defacto crap for this, what RPG system could be defined as a "wargamers RPG" with everything (including crunch) that goes with it for dungeon crawling et al? And in the breakdown of this area, is it better to have it be more crunchy and complex? Or is it better for it to be streamlined and dynamic? Is the distinction subjective? Does it depend on mood, available gaming time, etc? Do you make judgements based on core mechanics alone? Or on other things, like separate balance issues from optional splatbooks? Or the way the company treats their customers? Which things are more/less important to value this area? Are there other kinds of RPGs outside of "wargamers" vs "roleplayers" (or "lawyers" vs "storytellers", etc)? I mean, there seem to be lots of cool stories from the experiences thread from games like Fate, BESM, and various Star Wars RPGs, through to DnD (3.x through to 5th, mostly, including PF) that seem to be more dependent on the qualities of a non-lovely group and GM for Good Gaming, whereas a lot of the lovely stories revolve around terrible godawful players you wouldn't share a beer with, let alone a game, who manage to ruin even the best (or "best") games with their bullshit, so a lot of what I've learned from the Experiences thread about good/bad gaming seems to be largely subjective and reliant on non-lovely people to be fun? Although this does come with the caveat that more rules-heavy RPGs do seem to attract terrible people who can abuse the rules of the game (plus nerd fallacies) to do horrifically lovely things to the rest of the gaming group (I say this knowing that the exception of groups who bend/break the rules for communally agreed amusement in a given situation does exist, but can be considered as an exception, rather than the general rule?), with DnD as the McDonalds of RPGs attracting the most due to the market share. It just seems to me that this is a combination of lovely people being lovely people, and the ability of lovely people to find ways to abuse any system given the opening to do so?
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Mar 22, 2017 12:31
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Ilor posted:[Inigo Montoyo] You keep using that word. I do no thing it means what you thing it means. [/Inigo Montoyo] We can go 'round on the definition of fun, but the only one that matters to me is 'are the players at my table having fun'. At least for 5e, the rules as written aren't genrally actively hostile to the player the way say, Exalted 3e or Shadowrun are, and are simple enough that the game isn't just an optimization problem the way 3.5/PF are. It definitely still has a number of D&D's design warts, but those are almost endearing at this point, and not outright disruptive at the table.
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Mar 22, 2017 12:33
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Ilor posted:[Inigo Montoyo] You keep using that word. I do no thing it means what you thing it means. [/Inigo Montoyo] Since the RPGers have to gently caress up every topic they touch (jesus, go back to the kickstarter thread) it's mostly true. While some systems are better than others, RPGs are basically non-confrontational between members so you should just take the ruleset you are given and make things up with the power of your imagination.
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Mar 22, 2017 13:34
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LordAba posted:Since the RPGers have to gently caress up every topic they touch (jesus, go back to the kickstarter thread) it's mostly true. While some systems are better than others, RPGs are basically non-confrontational between members so you should just take the ruleset you are given and make things up with the power of your imagination. You don't need to pay £20-80 for rulebooks to do that.
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Mar 22, 2017 13:45
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spectralent posted:You don't need to pay £20-80 for rulebooks to do that. You don't need to spend that money on instructions for playing with your toy soldiers either, but here we are. 
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Mar 22, 2017 14:15
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Liquid Communism posted:You don't need to spend that money on instructions for playing with your toy soldiers either, but here we are. Yeah, but the aim is to get something more complex than putting stuff on a table and having it go how it feels right. You don't need rulebooks is only an argument to "The GM can do what he wants, it's all pretendy funtime games, so who cares about having good rules?", because if you do want rules that guide, support, and structure your game, as I assume most people do, the quality of the ruleset matters.
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Mar 22, 2017 14:25
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kingcom posted:Also I could unironically talk about TT RPG design forever mostly because the vast majority of TT RPG designers don't care/don't know/think they know but don't know about it AND half the time if you talk with a TT RPG player they get genuinely upset or dismissive with poo poo like 'oh well the GM can just improvise/ignore/solve it so who cares' when you bring up issues in design and how to fix them. It's crazy because RPG authors write the most about their games - multiple books worth! - but never seem to realize how important basic mechanical design is. Like, go look up the resolution mechanic in CthulhuTech and then cry.
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Mar 22, 2017 15:13
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https://regimental-standard.com/2017/03/22/fighting-alongside-the-guard-literally/ It's nice that they keep making these, but the reach is so low. Average FB reactions only number a couple hundred.
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Mar 22, 2017 15:19
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kingcom posted:AND half the time if you talk with a TT RPG player they get genuinely upset or dismissive with poo poo like 'oh well the GM can just improvise/ignore/solve it so who cares' when you bring up issues in design and how to fix them. This was basically what happened the last time I tried explaining to a DnD player why Dungeon World was so great. I was determined to describe what's great about it without explicitly bashing DnD's garbage rules, and every time I described one of the system's cooler features, he'd just insist that you can do that in DnD if your GM allows for it The problem is that it isn't about the game, it's about their identity as a person, which is defined in part by playing the game. Challenges to the game are a challenge to their identity, and changing what they play or their outlook on the game is just as difficult as changing who they are. Chill la Chill posted:https://regimental-standard.com/2017/03/22/fighting-alongside-the-guard-literally/ I love these
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Mar 22, 2017 15:24
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Chill la Chill posted:https://regimental-standard.com/2017/03/22/fighting-alongside-the-guard-literally/ I'm a little surprised by that as I would have thought that they'd try to bombard the fanbase with this sort of thing. It seems like the sort of thing you'd shotgun across multiple social media accounts, rather than purely FB alone? TheChirurgeon posted:why Dungeon World was so great. Would I be able to play an Arcane Trickster type character (a-la PF - rogue with magic and skill checks) and be the party swiss army knife? Is this better if you like dungeon crawling? If yes to either/both, then this is relevant to my interests. I have increasingly grown to prefer classless character systems/skill trees/etc, so anything that allows for that is my sort of thing. I did have a quick skim of the PbtA thread OP and it looks pretty cool as a generic system? mcjomar fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 15:24
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Cat Face Joe posted:There's a guy on the Infinity forums looking for Necromunda Escher Girls to chop up into a unit that has perfectly acceptable models.  And no matter how much he tries, they're still gonna be GW models with wrong proportions and shat on for both reasons.
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Mar 22, 2017 15:52
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Liquid Communism posted:5e especially has been much better about limiting the bonus stacking and making it less possible to simply build a broken character from two dozen sourcebooks, as was the 3.5 way carried over into Pathfinder. this is mainly a product of 5e's smaller line compared to previous editions tbh mcjomar posted:Would I be able to play an Arcane Trickster type character (a-la PF - rogue with magic and skill checks) and be the party swiss army knife? Is this better if you like dungeon crawling? If yes to either/both, then this is relevant to my interests. I have increasingly grown to prefer classless character systems/skill trees/etc, so anything that allows for that is my sort of thing. PBTA games are less about where your power comes from and more about what you do. for your arcane trickster dude, you'd pick a playbook (a class, basically) that is for some kind of tricky or magical dude and the whole power source thing is more your business. that power origin is important (if you want it to be) because it's going to influence when you choose to act instead of deferring to some other PC, but DW and other PBTA games don't have the D&D-style sharp division of martial/divine/mundane by default. there's no situation you can't handle in a PBTA, but rather situations you choose not to or possibly handle very poorly. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 16:10
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mcjomar posted:I'm a little surprised by that as I would have thought that they'd try to bombard the fanbase with this sort of thing.  Reminder that their main site only has a "subscribe to email newsletter" link: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/Contact-Use: oh would you look at that, I'm in Canada Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 16:12
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GW only has it's official Facebook pages, Youtube and it's Twitch channel. I actually asked about moving to different platforms when I went in for a position with their Media team and got a shrug on it. The only Twitters affiliated with them are employee personal ones (ADB, Duncan, etc).
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Mar 22, 2017 16:28
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Chill la Chill posted:e: oh would you look at that, I'm in Canada Yeah it keeps trying to assume I'm in either the US, NZ, or AU rather than realising I'm actually in the UK. Cease to Hope posted:PBTA games are less about where your power comes from and more about what you do. for your arcane trickster dude, you'd pick a skin (a class, basically) that is for some kind of tricky or magical dude and the whole power source thing is more your business. that power origin is important (if you want it to be) because it's going to influence when you choose to act instead of deferring to some other PC, but DW and other PBTA games don't have the D&D-style sharp division of martial/divine/mundane by default. there's no situation you can't handle in a PBTA, but rather situations you choose not to or possibly handle very poorly. I guess I'd go for "tricky" first then? I'm not sure what the "Power origin" is - is that more a descriptor for, like, a background? I.e. "you got your abilities because you were orphaned on the street, and were taken in by the local thieves guild" sort of deal? (because otherwise the image in my head is suddenly closer to peter parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider or something). And in regards choosing to act, is that to do with when you would have to roll for challenging stuff, or things your character might have difficulty doing? So in situations where your skills are either bad, or your skills are good but the thing you're attempting is hard? I.e. thief doesn't roll for an average door when lockpicking, when when trying to pick the mastercrafted safe of a dwarven locksmith who has protected his jewels behind an arcane and labyrinthine security system, you would totally be rolling for the difficult stuff?
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Mar 22, 2017 16:31
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I recommend checking out the DW thread. Everything is described in narrative terms, rather than statistical ones, and players are delegated a lot more initiative in describing the world.
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Mar 22, 2017 16:42
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I think dungeon world was the one where I played as a muscle wizard. Now I'm trying to see if I can get my friend to allow me to make a wookiee muscle wizard using jedi rules for the FFG star wars game. Muscle wizards own.
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Mar 22, 2017 16:45
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I recommend checking out the DW thread. Everything is described in narrative terms, rather than statistical ones, and players are delegated a lot more initiative in describing the world. For example, the GM wouldn't pre-set a target for the security system, instead, you would talk out your plan to deal with it and roll. Roll high and you succeed and help make up why. Maybe it wasn't that hard. Or you've seen something like this before. This is is a masterpiece of security and it's so cool and you get so into it you just slide on through in the zone. Roll average and you crack it, but leave tracks? Set off an alarm? Maybe you can't crack the safe, but you got a great idea how the party can haul the whole giant thing out of there. Maybe you did just fine, but this was all a trap and the owner is ready to intercept you as you leave. You succeeded but at a cost or with a setback. Roll low and whoops, it's a hard case or something so weird you've never seen it before - and maybe you'd come up with the reason why you can't crack it. Bust the safe but it's empty? Maybe you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. Failure doesn't necessarily mean your character failed, but it means something bad has happened, either not solving the current problem or replacing it with a new one.
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Mar 22, 2017 16:53
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food court bailiff posted:It's crazy because RPG authors write the most about their games - multiple books worth! - but never seem to realize how important basic mechanical design is. Like, go look up the resolution mechanic in CthulhuTech and then cry. I never got that far with CthulhuTech. I thought the setting sounded neat and i liked the art i had seen so i was planning to buy the core book but then it came up in the FATAL and Friends thread at the time and i learned about the rape machines and the crates of child sex slaves. 
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Mar 22, 2017 17:09
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mcjomar posted:I'm a little surprised by that as I would have thought that they'd try to bombard the fanbase with this sort of thing. You could, but if you're looking for a tactical tabletop experience, DW isn't likely to scratch that itch. It's great for playing with a narrative, but definitely a story game first.
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Mar 22, 2017 17:34
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https://twitter.com/AFVofficial/status/843535555979702277
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Mar 22, 2017 17:37
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From the bad thread:Hixson posted:8th edition already? Wow, GW must have something special planned. I have a hard time imagining there being that much room for improvement on 7th edition. I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm. Help me, death thread.
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Mar 22, 2017 18:32
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Thirsty Dog posted:From the bad thread: panascope posted:Yeah 7th is more or less perfect, I'm not sure how they build off of this. I'm sorry you had to find out like this.
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Mar 22, 2017 18:37
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Liquid Communism posted:You could, but if you're looking for a tactical tabletop experience, DW isn't likely to scratch that itch. It's great for playing with a narrative, but definitely a story game first. Okay so if we turned the question on its head, what would be a good non-D&D, non-PF, non-Hackmaster suggestion for a tactical tabletop RPG? Roll-playing, as opposed to I guess PbtA, or Fate being Role-Playing?
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Mar 22, 2017 18:52
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Apparently GW is going to sell to third-party distributors again: http://www.miniaturemarket.com/games-workshop The maximum they can cut prices is 15% (no promises, Aussies), but even still, this is almost a move that a regular company would make.
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