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Yawgmoth posted:As a DM I have an absolutely insane amount of poo poo planned out that I know is going half in the dumpster the moment the PCs interact with it. Then after a session where things get interacted with, I rewrite whatever needs to be based on the PCs' actions. I seriously have a good half dozen gdocs of stuff that get updated as needed. I like planning a lot of stuff too. It never pans like I planned but I can almost always just repurpose the stuff I made for the future.
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Jun 21, 2017 18:44
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Andrast posted:I like planning a lot of stuff too. It never pans like I planned but I can almost always just repurpose the stuff I made for the future.
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Jun 21, 2017 18:49
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hyphz posted:The 5e DMG has some truly horrible advice in it though. My personal favorite is that if a door's flush with the wall and painted to look like the wall, that's a secret door, and you find it with a search check.
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Jun 21, 2017 18:50
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Hyphz, what would you advocate regarding furthering the development of nonrule modules? Do you think that games like FATE and AW would benefit from having 'adventures', or does the fundamental difference in game style prevent that from being useful? And how do we maintain quality within modules for D&D when the majority of people interested in design criticism probably aren't going to look at them?
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Jun 21, 2017 18:52
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hyphz posted:Sure. So how much harm is it OK to inflict on them? How much is it OK to do? The problem with the "hard move"/"soft move" thing is that there's no actual list of which moves are hard or soft; you can use up PC resources as a soft move. You have a few misunderstandings on what a hard or soft move is, for starters. A soft move is one the players have time to react to. A soft move is like "Hey, this mud is really watery and thick. If you slip, you'll jam your gun or mess up your food." And then they can try to do something else, like go around or go more carefully, and maybe make a roll to avoid this danger you presented. A hard move is like "You fell in the mud during the fighting, and now your gun is gummed up and won't work until you clean it." No chance to react, you just suffer that move. You can't make hard moves for free, you can only make a hard move that follows. So you have to have established earlier that the thick, watery mud here could cause problems, and then someone fails a move or puts themselves in a bad situation where you can use the established danger to make a hard move against them. The reason none of the moves are divided into which ones are hard moves and which ones are soft moves is because all of them are both. You use soft moves to present problems, establish that they exist and they are something they need to pay attention to, and when those problems become real threats that cause them trouble, you use hard moves to actually make bad things happen to the players, in whatever way makes the most sense. Nothing just springs out of the aether. If the players want to know why those goblins were there, that's something they can ask questions about and you can give them some answers, and those answers will inform how future events play out. You'll use that establishment now to retroactively fill in the world, or maybe they're there because of something you established earlier. Nothing comes from nowhere, that goes against your principles. So to answer your way earlier post about "how does PbtA stop a GM from just being an rear end in a top hat and taking your stuff all the time?", the difference between soft and hard moves is some of it, because that's the rules and how the game works. A little bit of it is also "that's a boring way to play a game." And most of it is "that goes against their principles and agendas." I realize its easy to ignore those as a player coming from other games, but you cannot. Your Principles are your rules, they are important, they're how you make a PbtA game work. And your Agendas are strong guidelines, telling you how to play the game to get the mood it wants to set, and informing how you should use your moves. Ignoring your Principles and Agendas is like ignoring Challenge Rating when throwing monsters at players in D&D - it is explicitly against the rules and will lead to unfair or bad games. They aren't fluff, those rules are there for a reason.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:10
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gnome7 posted:So to answer your way earlier post about "how does PbtA stop a GM from just being an rear end in a top hat and taking your stuff all the time?", the difference between soft and hard moves is some of it, because that's the rules and how the game works. A little bit of it is also "that's a boring way to play a game." And most of it is "that goes against their principles and agendas." I realize its easy to ignore those as a player coming from other games, but you cannot. Your Principles are your rules, they are important, they're how you make a PbtA game work. And your Agendas are strong guidelines, telling you how to play the game to get the mood it wants to set, and informing how you should use your moves. I like a lot of those. But it's not so much about how does it stop the GM from being an rear end in a top hat, as much as how does it enable the GM to know how much of an rear end in a top hat to be. After all, the GM can always be a complete doormat who never does anything bad to the players, but that isn't fun and just looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-sCNfE0bM. I mean, Principles and Agendas? 2e AW has the principle "Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards." I mean, how are you supposed to balance those, or balance those against things like "be a fan of the players' characters". But even then, it's not necessarily just about that. I mean, also leaving through the AW 2e PDF it has things like an ability that lets you ask the GM questions about an enemy but with the note, "On a miss, ask a question anyway but be prepared for the worst." I think the idea of a player knowing that an enemy's properties were made worse because they rolled badly asking a question about them is immersion shattering for at least some players. DalaranJ posted:Hyphz, what would you advocate regarding furthering the development of nonrule modules? FATE probably can't be, because it's a system that allows players to specify arbitrary pieces of text and those are almost always harsh to run, especially with the "always on" rule in Fate Core. PbtA games could probably benefit from them (Monster of the Week actually does have adventures, although they could be better formalized) but AW itself probably not for the reason above.
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Jun 21, 2017 19:32
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Halloween Jack posted:To be fair, my experiences with Exalted are coloured by having played 1st edition, during college-age years. So my desire to engage seriously with The Curse and play Jason or Autolycus was rather overshadowed by the GM and some of the players driving everything towards Final Fantasy VII and harem anime. Believe me, I know this feeling. My experiences with Exalted 1E can be mostly sorted into "the game I wanted to play based on the parts of the line that I liked" (weird posthuman horror-fantasy in a universe systematically warped by the actions of foolish godlings) and "the game I actually played with other people" (almost entirely dumb anime power-fantasy garbage, if occasionally enjoyable). I can't blame people for coming at it from the latter perspective, because God knows the game allowed it, but it was an insane heartbreaker in its way. hyphz posted:But even then, it's not necessarily just about that. I mean, also leaving through the AW 2e PDF it has things like an ability that lets you ask the GM questions about an enemy but with the note, "On a miss, ask a question anyway but be prepared for the worst." I think the idea of a player knowing that an enemy's properties were made worse because they rolled badly asking a question about them is immersion shattering for at least some players. I think you're kind of misparsing this. A miss of this sort isn't arbitrarily reshaping the fiction because the player hosed up; it's revealing the worst-case scenario, or causing an evolution of the fiction based on the fact of the botched read, the same way that D&D has a situation evolve negatively when a player botches a roll. If you miss on Reading a Sitch, well, you've probably played your hand a little too hard, and that's going to make things worse -- the act of observing disturbs the observed -- or it's noticing something immediately seriously bad where a successful role might not have. AW isn't encouraging the MC to say "well, Rolfball just came in here for a drink and to shake down Knifecrime a little, but now that you rolled a 6 he's hopped up on Maelstrom powder with murder on his mind!!"
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Jun 21, 2017 19:53
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I don't know if it's partly White Wolf's fault or if the blame should rest entirely on the player base, but my feeling at the time was that they promised a game about mythological epics, with some obvious sops to anime, but what got pushed almost immediately was Final Fantasy 7: The Roleplaying Game.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:00
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I'm running into a strange problem. I'm currently flushed with free time so I've been running some games to keep me occupied. The issue comes from the fact that there are so many fantasy role-playing games. Just so many. At first I'm like " I will just do like 5e or Pathfinder because that's easy to get players." But then I'm like wait I hate those games. Then I'm like maybe old DND or DCC but I really can't decide. Choice paralysis is a real issue. It's not that I don't know of games, but that I know too many.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:04
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Just run the one you like how is that even a problem
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Jun 21, 2017 20:06
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hyphz posted:I like a lot of those. But it's not so much about how does it stop the GM from being an rear end in a top hat, as much as how does it enable the GM to know how much of an rear end in a top hat to be. After all, the GM can always be a complete doormat who never does anything bad to the players, but that isn't fun and just looks like <video>. This is true of drat near any system, though. What you're saying is that "if the GM ignores the way the game is supposed to be played, the GM can be too much of an rear end in a top hat/too much of a doormat," but that is true of any game system. What stops a DM from making encounters too easy in 5e D&D? What stops them from throwing too much loot at the players, or withholding loot to the point of being a huge rear end in a top hat about it? hyphz posted:But even then, it's not necessarily just about that. I mean, also leaving through the AW 2e PDF it has things like an ability that lets you ask the GM questions about an enemy but with the note, "On a miss, ask a question anyway but be prepared for the worst." I think the idea of a player knowing that an enemy's properties were made worse because they rolled badly asking a question about them is immersion shattering for at least some players. This likely just comes down to a different perspective on what a tabletop RPG is supposed to do. If you're expecting that the GM has created a world and your characters are in it, playing out an adventure, then yes, it's going to be difficult to swallow that your roll might have made the situation worse for what seems like an unrelated reason. But if you look at it as the GM and players collaborating on creating a story together--with the rules forcing and resolving conflict and helping to inject tension into the narrative--then it makes perfect sense that the in-universe facts might be different depending on your roll. It's very much a philosophical difference, I think. There's a certain kind of player, and a certain kind of GM, who'll have difficulty really getting PbtA/FATE/similar systems because of what they expect the GM's role to be versus the player's role. Covok posted:I'm running into a strange problem. I'm currently flushed with free time so I've been running some games to keep me occupied. Do you have players you know already who you're going to run the game for, or are you specifically hoping to run something that's popular so that you can attract players online/at a game store/etc.?
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Jun 21, 2017 20:06
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Plutonis posted:Just run the one you like how is that even a problem Can't decide which one I like. 
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Jun 21, 2017 20:08
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Harrow posted:Do you have players you know already who you're going to run the game for, or are you specifically hoping to run something that's popular so that you can attract players online/at a game store/etc.? The latter.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:08
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Draw up a random encounter table and roll on it.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:09
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Covok posted:The latter. My local rpg scene is all 5e, pathfinder, or world of darkness. Dunno about other people.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:11
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Covok posted:The latter. Why should you run something to appease a bunch of dweebs. Do as thou wilt.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:13
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Covok posted:The latter. I say go DCC. I think it can draw in the people who only like D&D while not being one of the D&D editions you hate. Or 13th Age, maybe, if you like it and you know that you can get people with "it's like D&D but with less bullshit." I'm reasonably sure it's well-known enough in tabletop gaming circles that you won't have too many people going, "13th Age? What the hell is that?"
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Jun 21, 2017 20:19
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Halloween Jack posted:What puts a pin in 40K for me is that the way to have fun with it is to set your game on the margins of it. Like I said, it's a fair critique of the setting/system. You can actually play one well within the margins if your players are savvy enough to know that in 40k, everyone's an unreliable narrator and you can play around with the fluff in every which way you choose. My main GM for 40k RPGs has come up with new Space Marine chapter based on the Space Wolves' geneseed (there's a mutation that makes them Space Bears instead), but if you put that before a 40k sperglord they'd have a conniption about there being no successor chapters to the Space Wolves or some poo poo like that. You also get cool poo poo like entire Ork tribes who present themselves as female because their primary enemies are the Sisters of Battle and they think the Nuns with Guns are ded 'ard, so they emulate them. hyphz posted:I like a lot of those. But it's not so much about how does it stop the GM from being an rear end in a top hat, as much as how does it enable the GM to know how much of an rear end in a top hat to be. After all, the GM can always be a complete doormat who never does anything bad to the players, but that isn't fun and just looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-sCNfE0bM. Maybe your GM shouldn't be an rear end in a top hat? 
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Jun 21, 2017 20:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:in a long campaign playing a Factotum/Chameleon with a Gnoll Warblade buddy and can confirm. I'm very jealous right now Halloween Jack posted:What puts a pin in D20 for me is that all the actually good D20 games alter it to the point that it's no longer really compatible with anything else D20, which was the entire point of D20 existing. It really is hard to think of something lile Mutants and Masterminds descending from the same ruleset at 13th Age when both have shaved off and painted over all the hard edges in the d20 rules they don't need.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:24
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LuiCypher posted:Like I said, it's a fair critique of the setting/system. You can actually play one well within the margins if your players are savvy enough to know that in 40k, everyone's an unreliable narrator and you can play around with the fluff in every which way you choose. My main GM for 40k RPGs has come up with new Space Marine chapter based on the Space Wolves' geneseed (there's a mutation that makes them Space Bears instead), but if you put that before a 40k sperglord they'd have a conniption about there being no successor chapters to the Space Wolves or some poo poo like that. I think anyone that gets way too involved in the lore of a franchise that they can accept having a little fun is not a good player and probably shouldn't be in the game. Like who can stand to play with an a****** like that? Harrow posted:I say go DCC. I think it can draw in the people who only like D&D while not being one of the D&D editions you hate. Yeah dcc's probably the best bet. I've run 13th Age but meh.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:25
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hyphz posted:I mean, Principles and Agendas? 2e AW has the principle "Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards." I mean, how are you supposed to balance those, or balance those against things like "be a fan of the players' characters". Here's the thing: if I'm understanding you correctly, your definition of balance in this case is basically balancing the power of the GM with the capabilities of the characters and/or players. But there's no mechanic in the world that'll stop a GM from being an rear end in a top hat and just throwing the worst things he can at the players. At all. Even the Agenda and Principles can't stop the GM if he doesn't care to follow them. Yeah, he's breaking the rules but that'd be just as true if he ignored CR in D&D. In that case, the problem isn't the system, it's that the GM is a jackhole. Apocalypse World isn't designed to be "balanced" in a numerical sense, because it's not about a series of fights against monsters. It's about people being put in bad situations to see how they react, thus a "this is an appropriate difficulty encounter for this type of group" is meaningless. Fate does have more of an interest in balanced encounters, but since the players have so many tools to turn things to their advantage, a CR-style balance system is pretty much impossible. The GM builds encounters not with an eye towards a special budget, but through creating an interesting challenge to overcome. Also, mechanical balance of the CR variety can really only work in a game where everything works off a universal "ranking" system, like levels. If we accept that two PCs of equal level have equal effectiveness in combat, and that a level X monster is the equivalent of a level X PC, then you can sit down and say "okay, since we have total X character levels, I can put them up against Y levels worth of monsters" and have it work out. But PbtA and Fate games don't have that level of...mechanical competence equivalence, I guess you'd call it? PbtA games don't have levels; yeah you could count advances but not all advances are mechanically equal. You can't balance a PbtA encounter because each playbook is so different and has very different areas of competence. The Battlebabe isn't mechanically balanced with the Waterbearer, but the thing is: they're not supposed to be. It even says so in the game: there are no status quos in Apocalypse World.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:28
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Harrow posted:This is true of drat near any system, though. What you're saying is that "if the GM ignores the way the game is supposed to be played, the GM can be too much of an rear end in a top hat/too much of a doormat," but that is true of any game system. What stops a DM from making encounters too easy in 5e D&D? What stops them from throwing too much loot at the players, or withholding loot to the point of being a huge rear end in a top hat about it? Well, let's try to avoid talking about "stopping" them. Obviously words in a book aren't going to stop them. Second, let's establish that the GM doesn't want to be an rear end in a top hat. If they wanted to, yes, no problem, they can do that in any system. But that isn't the problem. The problem is how the GM can give the players a challenging experience without ending up being seen as an rear end in a top hat, even if they fail. What stops a DM from making encounters too easy in 5e D&D? Nothing. But if the DM wants to raise the challenge, there's guidelines for how to do that. If he wants to have them fight a dragon and they lose, he's not an rear end in a top hat, he may have just made an innocent mistake. Compare that to any game where the stats for that dragon aren't written down in advance. Oh, does the dragon hit the player? That wasn't because the book says dragons have +7 to hit and you rolled a 10, it was just because you made it up, rear end in a top hat. Oh, does it do enough to kill them? That wasn't because the book says dragons do 3d6 damage and you rolled 15, it was just because you made it up, rear end in a top hat. If the GM has to make that decision on the fly on a round-by-round basis in the fight, then it's no better than a "bolt from the blue". Even if the DM didn't mean to be an rear end in a top hat, how can they deny the allegation? They did, after all, make that decision knowing that a character would die. quote:This likely just comes down to a different perspective on what a tabletop RPG is supposed to do. If you're expecting that the GM has created a world and your characters are in it, playing out an adventure, then yes, it's going to be difficult to swallow that your roll might have made the situation worse for what seems like an unrelated reason. But if you look at it as the GM and players collaborating on creating a story together--with the rules forcing and resolving conflict and helping to inject tension into the narrative--then it makes perfect sense that the in-universe facts might be different depending on your roll. It is a philosophical difference, but I don't really see it as "having difficulty" more than just "not wanting" to play that kind of system. Which is fine, but that category of players aren't getting a whole lot of love from RPG designers at the moment, which is why they're stagnating on stuff like 5e and PF. I mean, I have a group playing PF at the moment, I'm playing along, I'm not a great fan of the system, I'd really like to try something else but one of the other players who hasn't run before wants to GM and I can't deny the fact that 5e plus a module is much easier to GM than everything else.
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Jun 21, 2017 20:38
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Nuns with Guns posted:I'm very jealous right now
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Jun 21, 2017 20:38
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hyphz posted:It is a philosophical difference, but I don't really see it as "having difficulty" more than just "not wanting" to play that kind of system. Which is fine, but that category of players aren't getting a whole lot of love from RPG designers at the moment, which is why they're stagnating on stuff like 5e and PF. I mean, I have a group playing PF at the moment, I'm playing along, I'm not a great fan of the system, I'd really like to try something else but one of the other players who hasn't run before wants to GM and I can't deny the fact that 5e plus a module is much easier to GM than everything else. What sort of 'love' do you want from game designers? How is it different from what the OSR is doing?
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Jun 21, 2017 21:02
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hyphz posted:Well, let's try to avoid talking about "stopping" them. Obviously words in a book aren't going to stop them. They play tabletop games a few times. They gently caress up. They acknowledge they hosed up. They ask their players how they did, if things went how they wanted, what they could do better. They learn. And they do better next time. Nobody is perfect or can become perfect just through application of theory and thorough knowledge of rules. Those help, but if you want to become a good GM, you gotta go GM some games. hyphz posted:It is a philosophical difference, but I don't really see it as "having difficulty" more than just "not wanting" to play that kind of system. Which is fine, but that category of players aren't getting a whole lot of love from RPG designers at the moment, which is why they're stagnating on stuff like 5e and PF. I mean, I have a group playing PF at the moment, I'm playing along, I'm not a great fan of the system, I'd really like to try something else but one of the other players who hasn't run before wants to GM and I can't deny the fact that 5e plus a module is much easier to GM than everything else. I mean if you want a game with more mechanical crunch and developed settings that are better than PF or 5E, those do also exist. For games close to those, there's 13th Age and Torchbearer. If you're willing to spread out into other kinds of fantasy, there's Shadows of the Demon Lord or The One Ring. For games completely different but still in that style, there's Costume Fairy Adventures or Strike! gnome7 fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 21:17
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fool_of_sound posted:Ok, so I've been turning over an Oliver Twist-esque mini-campaign over in my head recently, and I'm looking for a system that's conducive to it. Something with can handle an investigative and social focus mostly. Combat isn't important, but a decent system for injuries is. Blades in the Dark?
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Jun 21, 2017 21:22
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gnome7 posted:I mean if you want a game with more mechanical crunch and developed settings that are better than PF or 5E, those do also exist. For games close to those, there's 13th Age and Torchbearer. If you're willing to spread out into other kinds of fantasy, there's Shadows of the Demon Lord or The One Ring. For games completely different but still in that style, there's Costume Fairy Adventures or Strike! Also Fragged Empire outside of fantasy (though there'll be two fantasy games with the same system coming soon-ish as well). hyphz posted:Compare that to any game where the stats for that dragon aren't written down in advance. Oh, does the dragon hit the player? That wasn't because the book says dragons have +7 to hit and you rolled a 10, it was just because you made it up, rear end in a top hat. Oh, does it do enough to kill them? That wasn't because the book says dragons do 3d6 damage and you rolled 15, it was just because you made it up, rear end in a top hat. If the GM has to make that decision on the fly on a round-by-round basis in the fight, then it's no better than a "bolt from the blue". Even if the DM didn't mean to be an rear end in a top hat, how can they deny the allegation? They did, after all, make that decision knowing that a character would die. None of that is true of PbtA, though. Like, let's look at Dungeon World, which is probably the most pertinent PbtA example given that we're comparing to other fantasy RPGs. That isn't at all how the game determines if a character takes damage or how much damage the character takes. The dragon does have stats. The dragon has a damage die, the dragon has HP, and the dragon has specific moves that it can do when a player fails a roll. And moves usually have specific consequences that often tell the GM exactly what to do if the player fails or rolls a partial success, and the player can see those right on the move list or on their character sheet (for class-specific moves). The GM doesn't just make up what moves open a character up for damage--many moves have that built right in. When does the dragon hit the player? When the player rolls a move and the results say they take damage. For example, if the player attacks the dragon head-on in a melee fight and rolls Hack and Slash, they'll take damage on a 6 or lower, or possibly when they open themselves to a counterattack on a 7-9. How much damage does the dragon do when that happens? Well, the SRD says that to determine the dragon's damage you roll 2d12, take the higher, and add 5, and it ignores 4 armor. None of that is GM fiat. It's important to remember that wording matters in PbtA. Moves have specific narrative triggers, they don't just happens whenever the GM thinks they should. Moves have specific narrative and mechanical consequences. hyphz posted:It is a philosophical difference, but I don't really see it as "having difficulty" more than just "not wanting" to play that kind of system. Which is fine, but that category of players aren't getting a whole lot of love from RPG designers at the moment, which is why they're stagnating on stuff like 5e and PF. I mean, I have a group playing PF at the moment, I'm playing along, I'm not a great fan of the system, I'd really like to try something else but one of the other players who hasn't run before wants to GM and I can't deny the fact that 5e plus a module is much easier to GM than everything else. Well, sure, it's entirely reasonable not to want to play PbtA. I'm not running anything like that right now. It's not what I feel like running or what my players feel like playing. But I think a lot of our discussion right now is about players having difficulty understanding the concept of the game in the first place--you specifically referred to "confusion" on the RPGNet forums, for example. Harrow fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 21:45
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Plutonis posted:It still pisses me off that there was not a 4E videogame even though the loving ruleset is perfect for it. Someone needs to take the rights from WoTC immediately. The new XCOM, XCOM2, and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle are basically 4E with the numbers filed off.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:19
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golden bubble posted:The new XCOM, XCOM2, and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle are basically 4E with the numbers filed off. *sincerely and without an ounce of exaggeration* I'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in my ear.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:31
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You play Nintendo and don't like Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle?
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Jun 21, 2017 22:34
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gnome7 posted:They play tabletop games a few times. They gently caress up. They acknowledge they hosed up. They ask their players how they did, if things went how they wanted, what they could do better. They learn. And they do better next time. But again, I'm not talking about making a mistake. At some point you have to do bad stuff to the PCs and you have to do it to some extent on purpose. Not being an rear end in a top hat while doing that is the tricky bit. If your player's favorite character gets in the way of dragon's breath, and they have 10 hit points left, and you roll an 8, then if you don't have something written down - ideally written down by someone else - that says that dragon's breath has a +4 damage modifier then you're going to be seen as an rear end in a top hat if you decide that it does. And if, because of that, you decide that it doesn't? Then your player need no longer fear dragon's breath. Harrow posted:When does the dragon hit the player? When the player rolls a move and the results say they take damage. For example, if the player attacks the dragon head-on in a melee fight and rolls Hack and Slash, they'll take damage on a 6 or lower, or possibly when they open themselves to a counterattack on a 7-9. How much damage does the dragon do when that happens? Well, the SRD says that to determine the dragon's damage you roll 2d12, take the higher, and add 5, and it ignores 4 armor. None of that is GM fiat. In the specific case of fighting a dragon, yes. But that was just an example. In the case of Dungeon World, the question is much more likely to be about the frequency and level of impact of Defy Danger checks. (And my understanding is that DW is considered a malformed PbtA game because of the ill definition of Defy Danger.) quote:I mean if you want a game with more mechanical crunch and developed settings that are better than PF or 5E, those do also exist. For games close to those, there's 13th Age and Torchbearer. If you're willing to spread out into other kinds of fantasy, there's Shadows of the Demon Lord or The One Ring. For games completely different but still in that style, there's Costume Fairy Adventures or Strike! I actually like 13th Age, but the F&F review of it suggests it's seriously flawed once played with experience, which has put me off it a bit. CFA of course I like (I wrote the F&F for that one) but is a bit specific and doesn't really have the same nature of challenge as most RPGs. And Strike! is ok for the combat system, but the skill checks are a bit vague. hyphz fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 22:35
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hyphz posted:But again, I'm not talking about making a mistake. At some point you have to do bad stuff to the PCs and you have to do it to some extent on purpose. Not being an rear end in a top hat while doing that is the tricky bit. If your player's favorite character gets in the way of dragon's breath, and they have 10 hit points left, and you roll an 8, then if you don't have something written down - ideally written down by someone else - that says that dragon's breath has a +4 damage modifier then you're going to be seen as an rear end in a top hat if you decide that it does. And if, because of that, you decide that it doesn't? Then your player need no longer fear dragon's breath. But you are talking about making a mistake. You're asking "how do I do a bad thing to the players without being an rear end in a top hat" and the answer is "just do some bad things to the players and find out." I don't know you, I don't know your players. If someone takes 12 damage from dragon fire when they have 10 health, then oops. I burned your character real bad, maybe to death. Is that an rear end in a top hat move? I don't know. That depends on how that player reacts to this happening, and how you react to their reaction, and what you do about it from there. If they don't want to die and make that clear, the non-rear end in a top hat move is to step back and say "okay, you're burned real bad and you're out of the fight, because that's how the rules work, but you're not dead yet." If they don't want to die and you say "Well you burned to death, tough luck," you're probably being an rear end in a top hat. But maybe not! Maybe the player is cool with it. That's on them, that's on you, that's on experience with your group and talking things out. You want to know how to not be an rear end in a top hat in a tabletop game and the fact is that that boundary changes based on who you're playing with and what everyone's expectations are. Some people are more ready to die or suffer serious harm than others, people are more willing to have bad things happen if there's the expectation that bad things will happen, people are less willing to have permanent bad things happen in sillier sorts of games. hyphz posted:In the specific case of fighting a dragon, yes. But that was just an example. In the case of Dungeon World, the question is much more likely to be about the frequency and level of impact of Defy Danger checks. (And my understanding is that DW is considered a malformed PbtA game because of the ill definition of Defy Danger.) A perfect game doesn't exist. Finding the right game for you involves finding the game whose flaws aren't flaws you mind all that much. There's a lot of really good games that are super narrow in what they are about, but if you want a flawless game you'll be waiting a while.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:54
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hyphz posted:In the specific case of fighting a dragon, yes. But that was just an example. In the case of Dungeon World, the question is much more likely to be about the frequency and level of impact of Defy Danger checks. (And my understanding is that DW is considered a malformed PbtA game because of the ill definition of Defy Danger.) Oh, sure, Dungeon World absolutely has problems. But even it, as a kind of weird PbtA game, offers quite a bit of guidance on when moves are triggered and what the consequences are for failure. But I think your ideal game has quite a bit more mechanical rigor than PbtA is meant to, which is fine, because there are a lot of really good non-D&D games that also do that. (For example, Fragged Empire.) hyphz posted:I actually like 13th Age, but the F&F review of it suggests it's seriously flawed once played with experience, which has put me off it a bit. CFA of course I like (I wrote the F&F for that one) but is a bit specific and doesn't really have the same nature of challenge as most RPGs. And Strike! is ok for the combat system, but the skill checks are a bit vague. Ah, I think the bolded part is where you're separating a bit from PbtA and why that framework (and, by extension, other narrative games like FATE) doesn't really get at what you want. They're not really about challenging players. They're about the players and the GM making a story happen together. Maybe a better way to say it is that PbtA is about challenging the characters to create narrative tension, but not necessarily about challenging the players.
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Jun 21, 2017 23:04
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Also characters in apocalypse world are pretty loving powerful. If you're wondering what damage is fair to deal to a gunlugger, it's any. Those guys can survive a hit from a train, then destroy it for revenge.
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Jun 21, 2017 23:16
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Remember that blog post from a few pages back, about making enemy weaknesses all about random, unguessable things so it doesn't turn into rock-paper-scissors? I wrote a response.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:16
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Halloween Jack posted:There's a pretty good PBTA Rogue Trader hack out there, if that's your thing. Last I checked it's not completely polished, but totally playable. Their forums are having trouble, but it's here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...wdQbs4dLeAs3QIw There have been at least two failed attempts to run it PBP on these forums, and you betcha I'll sign up for a third try.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:21
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Halloween Jack posted:There's a pretty good PBTA Rogue Trader hack out there, if that's your thing. Last I checked it's not completely polished, but totally playable. Sorry I meant a war game not an RPG
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Jun 22, 2017 00:47
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Okay, I have a design question, about MDA framework. Let's say I have identified an aesthetic to shoot for. How do I most easily determine what mechanics to use to point at that aesthetic?
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Jun 22, 2017 00:51
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Kickstarter LIVE HERE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1721105501/the-yellow-king-roleplaying-game-from-robin-d-laws?ref=nav_search http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/announcing-the-yellow-king-rpg/ quote:Written and designed by GUMSHOE master Robin D. Laws, YKRPG takes you on a brain-bending spiral through multiple selves and timelines.   
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Jun 22, 2017 01:17
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| # ? May 13, 2024 22:38 |
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Red Market's News!!   quote:TL; DR Also the core book is clocking in at a grand total of 496 pages! 
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Jun 22, 2017 02:03
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