rumble in the bunghole posted:

Here's a roundup of entries in the 2017 200 word RPG competition I found interesting.

...

Slap me and kiss me made made a cool game with a really good and evocative resolution system.

Anniversary posted:

Hostile V posted:

Good afternoon, Friend Computer. I got my copy of Paranoia in the mail today and I found out I actually had access to the PDFs since last August. I am reporting to you that I am not happy but due to the fact that unhappiness does not actually seem to be treasonous in the new edition (and in fact there are really no rules for treason outside of "you have five GTA-style stars and treason starts get handed out at debriefing missions, probably") I feel like my confession is pointless.

Please do not invest in the new edition. Please just continue paying XP. I have many thoughts but my thoughts are this:

• Group chargen is suited towards making everyone in the group uncomfortable due to the fact that if you take a Skill, the person next to you has to take that exact same skill as a negative. This doesn't strike me as fun. This strikes me as a mechanic perfectly designed to create legitimate Mario Party-style hostility amongst everyone at the table dedicated at the person next to you. It is incredibly reminiscent of Wraith's chargen but with actual mechanical weight.
  
• Speaking of mechanical weight, pretty much everything that's new (DAIVs, terrorism) don't really have mechanical weight. Terrorists are just a blank slate problem. DAIVs may or may not exist and only two of them actually give a mechanical benefit in the book. Plus the fact that a DAIV is roleplayed as the person next to you yelling in your ear is just an invitation for assholery.
  
• Tying character progression, equipment, money and refreshing innate benefits to your XP pool is not a good idea and has been rightly abandoned even by D&D.
  
• Substantial cutbacks on Secret Societies and Mutant Powers to the extent that they're just kind of bland. Sometimes you have duties for the former. Sometimes you can use the latter.
  
• The ability to change your skill rankings and stat rankings by burning Moxie Points for good and backup clones is not really a good idea.
  
• The different tones of play have been eliminated and the premade missions are basically half in Zap territory for the most part. Pun names run rampant. Puns in general run rampant. This isn't entirely great.
  
• No real rules for Treason.
  
• Your Fate Points (Moxie) should not double as a Sanity meter and also a Sanity meter is not a great idea.
  
• They make a lot about the fact that you've got a buttload of cyberware in your head and then kinda just leave it really open for the GM to figure the gist of that out. The fact that everyone's constantly livestreaming back to the Computer all the time is really underutilized outside of the idea of dead zones.
  
• Alpha Complex just feels barren and definitely requires GMs to just come up with stuff. As a whole there are no longer any Junior Citizens and most citizens are decanted as fully-grown, vat-educated Infrareds spat out into the world to do stuff. Yes it's mentioned that the youngest age you can be decanted is 12 and then you can get an education. Nothing is really made of this.
  
• Changing the old system of roll-under d20 to a d6 system where you need X successes is certainly an...inspired choice.
  
• Really not a fan of the Computer dice idea which is something you must roll at all times and on a 6 the Computer intervenes and automatically helps and costs you a Moxie point.
  
• I don't have much to say about the card system because I just...really did not find it to be particularly approachable. This new system has the cards take preference over everything else and playing them is basically like playing the card game Bullshit. Cards are burned to attempt to defend in melee. Cards are burned to use equipment. There are Equipment, Action, Reaction and Mutant Power cards. Everything else boils down to "pick a stat and a skill and you do that after everything card-related has been dealt with".
  
• It's really weird when a mission is like "okay so this one item is a card in the deck that the characters get and all of the other items aren't".
  
• There's also just a weird juxtaposition between the editions that is best exemplified by the three premade missions that are linked introductions and the last one which is an old mission that boils down to "your current briefing got hijacked to assign you a different mission (paint a corridor) but everyone assumes you're on the original mission (go Outside)".
  
• Actually in retrospect there's jack poo poo about Outside. The Sierra Club is swallowed up by the Romantics and mixed into an original society that's so boring I forget the name (Alpha Complex Historical Society Something Something).
  
• For real, it feels like they stripped out so much to try to make the game approachable. A d6 system, cards for powers, the fact that it comes in a box with separate books. The result is not something I would call entirely approachable. The result is something I would call "Kickstarted and it shows". Is XP perfect? No. But it honestly does flow faster and better and all of the systems are actually attached and functioning, for better or for worse. I sincerely liked XP's combat approach of "everyone picks an action and they literally all happen at once, no initiative in combat" as opposed to the phases of Card Play.
  
• Oh, one last thing: the negative skill ranks. Normally when you roll a pool of dice, 5s and 6s are successes and the others do nothing. When you roll a negative skill, you assemble a positive pool of dice, roll them, count fives and sixes as successes...and then subtract successes depending on how many dice are 1-4. Considering how normally in a dice pool system you want to assemble a large amount of dice at once, why even loving bother rolling a negative skill ever considering that the odds are substantially weighed against you that you'll end up with zero or less successes?
  

Covok posted:

She eats through her skin. I control everything about her. I did this so I can see woman cosplay as her because I am pervert mysgonist. I even programmed her to make sexy poses in your helicopter because I have no respect for women. Now, don't you feel ashamed?

Covok posted:

She eats through her skin. I control everything about her. I did this so I can see woman cosplay as her because I am pervert mysgonist. I even programmed her to make sexy poses in your helicopter because I have no respect for women. Now, don't you feel ashamed?

Plutonis posted:

Shut the gently caress you you worthless worm

Plutonis posted:

Shut the gently caress you you worthless worm

Plutonis posted:

I namesearched myself on twitter for curiosity and 90% of the results are people from this forum making GBS threads on me. Can't see why the haterade to be honest.

My Lovely Horse posted:

I feel like I vaguely remember a webcomic or something that was all about snakepubes.

Pubesnakes?

My Lovely Horse posted:

I feel like I vaguely remember a webcomic or something that was all about snakepubes.

Pubesnakes?

Ominous Jazz posted:

There was an oglaf comic about it I'm pretty sure but why is it a thing in your elf game

Ominous Jazz posted:

Dog is defending the honor of loving Quiet the hill you wanna die on

Cartoon Violence posted:

Wait, for real? I just put that into my description as a jokey sort of extension of "all hair is snakes", but I didn't know people were actually into that. Then again, internet.


Some things that are funny between friends are not funny when shared with others. Same thing with the Krakengesicht description, although they're meant to be caricatures.

fool_of_sound posted:

Yeah I remember some joke about snake armpit hair. Anyways it's funny and no big deal but probs shouldn't be in an actual product.

Anniversary posted:

Yeah I just got to the Krakengesicht.

They're sexualized cthulhus?

quote:

The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.

Cartoon Violence posted:

Yeah, I suppose you're right. It was just meant to be funny, as with any description that gets into the physiology of monsters. But if it's troublesome I'll take it out.

Plutonis posted:

Kojima's a horndog, but reviving this stupid poo poo after two years is unforgivable.

Anniversary posted:

So my perspective is that I'm gonna have more fun if you don't edit things (yet). But if you want to make changes I totally understand.

So far nothing really strikes me as beyond the pale. But that might be different for different people of course.

Cartoon Violence posted:

Hey, as long as it's not like for real bothering anyone I'll leave all the crazy or weird stuff in. If it's more fun for you that way, then that's great, I'll leave it as is. If everyone's having fun, that's what matters to me.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

I'm going to be running Paranoia in the week - what's a good module for a new group? Or can I just give them a heist and a bunch of conflicting secret objectives and let them drive the plot themselves?

Cartoon Violence posted:

Weird, I guess we're just the opposites then. Growing up, and even getting into my adult years with RPG's, I always saw more choice as better. Well, at least as long as the creator put effort into the choices. Obviously, I wouldn't accept a tabletop game equivalent to Action 52. But, I put a lot of thought into each playable Race and Class, it's not like there's a bunch of useless garbage thrown in just for giggles or gloating purposes. I suppose you're right that that amount of information can seem overwhelming to a newcomer. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, but doesn't 3.5e have more Races and Classes than that, even if you only use official books?

Strom Cuzewon posted:

I'm going to be running Paranoia in the week - what's a good module for a new group? Or can I just give them a heist and a bunch of conflicting secret objectives and let them drive the plot themselves?

Yawgmoth posted:

If you want it to be actually read and used, you have to put it into manageable pieces. More choices are definitely not always better because really? There's really that much mechanical depth and breadth that you have 74 meaningfully distinct options? I mean sure, 3.5e probably has more races/classes, but (a) they're spread out over 68 books, (b) a shitload of those races are "[adjective] elf/dwarf/gnome/etc", (c) there's a fuckload of bloat in 3.5e, and (d) just because you don't have the most options doesn't mean you don't have too many. If I were going to introduce someone to 3.5e today, I wouldn't think of giving them even 10% of the material available; I'd give them an overview of the system and pick maybe 8 races, the tome of battle classes plus a few casters (probably just the fixed-list casters), and from there ask them what their concept is so I could give them maybe a dozen feats to pick from. Everything else could come later, when they have a working base of understanding about the system and mechanics and will know what they want and what to look for.

I'll give a real world example. One of my friends has his own homebrew system. He keeps the entire drat thing in a couple of huge bags because it spans almost 30 years of homebrew everything and is about half a dozen fat 3 ring binders. He's got random tables for character creation and even making something totally random it takes about 45 minutes because you end up rolling about 30 times. If you tried to actually read all of that poo poo to make a character, you'd never finish; there's just too many different potential races, powers, etc. to actually retain. Back when he ran it at our university's game club, I'd see a lot of people just walk away or not show up a second time because there are a ton of "you have several dozen options, for next week pick one of them for this game" style choices and people didn't want to spend all night skimming several books of poo poo to find the gems that they weren't sure existed.

When you have the equivalent of a phone book of just game options, it's pretty much impossible to consider them all, which dilutes the desire to even make the choice and thus play the game. I get wanting to have options, but it's way better to just have a handful of examples and a guideline for more than spelling out every single potentiality.

My Lovely Horse posted:

D&D in particular has too many races anyway, not just player races that have to each have their place in the world but also tons of varieties of goblin, kobold and orc, all of which are implied to have at least a degree of civilization and thus also call for being placed in a setting, and it's tough to do that without resorting to creature races as real world nationality analogues.

My Lovely Horse posted:

I'd leave it up to the players interpretation and the group's tone how explicit they want to go with it. If you flat out say THEY HAVE SNAKEPUBES you're putting that image in everyone's head, if you just say "all their hair is snakes" it's the group's choice if they immediately yell SNAKEPUBES or restrain themselves to snake chest and armpit hair jokes, but both are equally valid.

On a sidenote: do anyone else's groups get much raunchier as the players get older and married, or just mine?

e: once I described a village of half-elves on the edge of the elven forest and one player burst out "they only come out of the woods to gently caress" and I was like, okay, that is what it says in my notes but dang girl.

Cartoon Violence posted:

Hmm, I've never really thought about it that way before. I guess I've just been lucky that I was always surrounded by players that ate up and enjoyed the massive amount of choices. I had no idea I'd created something that could be so intimidating to others. Thanks so much for explaining it to me, though. I feel like I really get what you've been trying to tell me now.

My Lovely Horse posted:

D&D in particular has too many races anyway, not just player races that have to each have their place in the world but also tons of varieties of goblin, kobold and orc, all of which are implied to have at least a degree of civilization and thus also call for being placed in a setting, and it's tough to do that without resorting to creature races as real world nationality analogues.

These days I often have my players pick races from everything available, and whatever subset they pick is what civilized races there are in the world, period. Well, plus one or two for additional NPCs and/or antagonists. It makes for more interesting settings, too. You picked the Revenant, looks like in this world the dead sometimes come back spontaneously - maybe during the campaign we'll find out why.

P.d0t posted:

The other consideration is that basically if a class needs X and Y stats, then only races with bonuses to X and/or Y are real, actual options for that class' build.

Something like WoW manages this by just saying "Race B can only be Class X,Y,Z" to use another example.

Players need to be either able to quickly/easily pare down their choices, or the options just become a barrier of cruft.

Anniversary posted:

So part of why there seems to be so many races is that, from what I can tell, you can play as almost any type of sapient species that exists in Shadow's Edge - which leads to some weird things. Like being able to play a rotting, reincarnating mummy that's tied to a sorcerer and permanently dies if they do. Or a dragon, sorry, I mean Draco. Or a Demi-Draco (because when Draco's die people get infused with their essence and gain the ability to turn into them).

Also I'm pretty sure there's several Animorphs references in here and I'm pretty okay with that.

P.d0t posted:

Something like WoW manages this by just saying "Race B can only be Class X,Y,Z" to use another example.

Players need to be either able to quickly/easily pare down their choices, or the options just become a barrier of cruft.

Kwyndig posted:

Honestly though? I don't think games actually need mechanically distinct races. I allow it in 4e but the way I do it is in a distinct not giving a poo poo fashion, players just pick the 2 stat bonuses they want, the racial power they want (subject to veto if they try to pull particularly broken Dragon magazine poo poo), and then they can call themselves Crablante the Crab Man for all I care.

Cartoon Violence posted:

I really like this idea, freedom of character customization and it still fits into 4e's crunchy mechanics.

My Lovely Horse posted:

On a sidenote: do anyone else's groups get much raunchier as the players get older and married, or just mine?

Countblanc posted:

I'd say people I play with now are more comfortable with their characters being horny but that may also be that I play with different people now than I did in high school. Like, my character in my 4e campaign may as well be asexual (he's been hit on once or twice but has never doled out anymore more than a shonen protag-style "thank you for the compliment, would you like to fist fight now?" in return), but one of the other PCs is married to someone back home and another is an eladrin so he's obviously Constantly Horny, and everyone seems pretty comfortable and mature about it. The latter character in particular would probably not have either gone over well or been played respectfully in any prior group of mine.

Reene posted:

My groups get progressively more crass and bizarre but the crassness is more generally respectful of other people.

It's weird but not bad.

Kwyndig posted:

If everybody is good at improv the latter approach works fine. Hell, if you know your players well enough you can give them just enough rope and sit back while they sabotage each other even if they're not great at improv.