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Good system to run a Terminator RPG
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Jun 27, 2017 19:25
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Oh, that was cringe-inducing, I'd forgotten how bad that PR campaign was.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:26
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Halloween Jack posted:Yes, Genesys is a singularly awful choice for a name. Besides being generic and uninteresting, Genesys was the name of a failed fantasy RPG that immediately sputtered and died amidst terrible PR. At least this probably means they won't contest the name.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:32
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I found the system that FFG uses for Star Wars to be pretty garbage, but hopefully this does okay.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:33
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There was also a failed Kickstarter for a deckbuilding RPG called Genesis, and I found a RPGnet thread for some guy's generic universal RPG also named Genesys, so plenty of room for confusion here. gently caress why didn't they just call it Fantasy Flight unseenlibrarian posted:Yeah. I don't think they actually got to the point of being an actual RPG, they were going for that whole mixed media thing and were gonna have a smartphone app and etc and etc and all that remains of it is a twitter account that last posted in 2013.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:37
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Genesys really went downhill once Peter Gabriel left.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:38
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The new Bundle of Holding is Mutant Chronicles 3e. This is something that's been on the periphery of my radar for a while now; anyone know anything about it? It uses Mophidius' "2d20" system, but I don't know anything about that either.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:42
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Serf posted:I found the system that FFG uses for Star Wars to be pretty garbage, but hopefully this does okay. Same here, I'm not a big fan of counting symbols when simple math is usually faster.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:42
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Kwyndig posted:Same here, I'm not a big fan of counting symbols when simple math is usually faster. Simple math gives you a single value, but the FFGSW rolling space has more than one dimension.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:44
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Serf posted:I found the system that FFG uses for Star Wars to be pretty garbage, but hopefully this does okay. The books are nice enough physical objects, and they did solve the Jedi problem (by putting all the Jedi in a separate Jedi-specific game). But the system is...adequate at best.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:45
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I don't like rolling symbols because it makes playing through roll20 annoying and that's like 80% of my RPG time these days
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Jun 27, 2017 19:46
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Evil Mastermind posted:The new Bundle of Holding is Mutant Chronicles 3e. This is something that's been on the periphery of my radar for a while now; anyone know anything about it? It's not broken like some of the other 2d20 games. It supports multiple eras of play fairly easily in the source books. Will post about 2d20 as a system later unless someone beats me to it.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:48
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Kwyndig posted:It's not broken like some of the other 2d20 games. It supports multiple eras of play fairly easily in the source books. Will post about 2d20 as a system later unless someone beats me to it. Please do, since it's also the Conan system.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:49
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FMguru posted:Yeah. It's got a mildly interesting narrative core mechanic with EIGHT MILLION TONS OF FIDDLY BULLSHIT DETAILS stacked on top of it. Plus, the main narrative oversystems (Reputation, spending Force Points) don't work at all. Force points and reputation didn't work at all? I have to disagree. Force points work just fine as a push back and forth thing. If you mean for force powers, I have to disagree again. It rather elegantly models the nature of light and dark sides of the force. As for obligation and duty (and morality), the worked fine for their intended purpose: generating quests that are relevant to the player characters. Not saying you have to like it or your opinions are wrong, but saying it didn't work at all is misrepresenting things. Andrast posted:I don't like rolling symbols because it makes playing through roll20 annoying and that's like 80% of my RPG time these days Roll20 actually has a built in app that allows you to do that. Just set your character sheets to Star Wars Edge of the Empire and enable the API and everyone can roll the dice with aggregate symbols off their character sheets.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:50
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Covok posted:Roll20 actually has a built in app that allows you to do that. Just set your character sheets to Star Wars Edge of the Empire and enable the API and everyone can roll the dice with aggregate symbols off their character sheets. I am aware. Still annoying compared to just normal rolling though. (and my group doesn't like using built-in sheets in roll20 anyway)
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Jun 27, 2017 19:51
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The light side/dark side point system is one of the few things I actually liked about FFG Star Wars. The fiddly dice bullshit that bogs the game down and inane gear lists/spaceship stat nonsense was a big turnoff. FFG does make a pretty drat game book though. Production quality is probably their best asset.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:00
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Evil Mastermind posted:Oh, wait, it was those guys? I'd forgotten all about that "contest". Should Fun Facts about that mess go in here, the industry thread, or left buried in obscurity?
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Jun 27, 2017 20:00
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The dice worked a lot better in WHRP3, where the action cards gave you a predetermined list of things to spend symbols on specific to the action. A lot was lost in the move to a generic list in Star Wars. Granted, the cards and sheer amount of STUFF also necessitated a particular type of play group and a higher level of engagement in the mechanics from players. But when it came together it was extremely cool.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:07
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LeSquide posted:Should Fun Facts about that mess go in here, the industry thread, or left buried in obscurity?
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Jun 27, 2017 20:13
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I love the FFG games/systems in general but yeah it does get awful fiddly sometimes. Convincing people to play Warhammer Fantasy RP 3E is about as difficult as getting them to play Arkham Horror with all the expansions. I love the game, but man my friends are just not as enthused by the amount of moving pieces as I am. I've been loving Shadow of the Demon Lord though. Played in Serf's games and since then I've run it a couple times for my groups, it's a great system. Speaking of SotDL, what's the closest equivalent in sci-fi games? Key points of interest: simple but crunchy mechanics, pretty lethal game, low-power/resource-starved PCs at least at first, quick character creation, general sense of being completely outmatched by the setting/enemies. I don't know poo poo about sci-fi games, my playgroups have always been fairly crunchy fantasy dorks, the furthest we've gotten is a couple 40k one-shots and some FFG SW games.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:15
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FFG SW's stiffy for equipment lists, gear mods and doing drugs should transfer quite nicely to a gritty cyberpunk setting like Android. 
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Jun 27, 2017 20:22
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Rip_Van_Winkle posted:Speaking of SotDL, what's the closest equivalent in sci-fi games? Key points of interest: simple but crunchy mechanics, pretty lethal game, low-power/resource-starved PCs at least at first, quick character creation, general sense of being completely outmatched by the setting/enemies. I don't know poo poo about sci-fi games, my playgroups have always been fairly crunchy fantasy dorks, the furthest we've gotten is a couple 40k one-shots and some FFG SW games.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:32
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First I'm going to mention the elephant in the room from the Star Trek playtest: Momentum. In MC this resource doesn't last, you lose a point a turn and it basically just all goes away as soon as the scene is done. What this means is it would be hard to to use Momentum to boost subsequent rolls, but it's not even an option, instead you spend it on various skill activations for the action you earned Momentum on. With the fast drain and little to no ability to boost rolls you can't use the unlimited Momentum glitch they introduced in Star Trek, where you could use Momentum to boost your rolls to the extent that you always earned back the Momentum on your actions. Second: Conan and Infinity probably work slightly differently, I don't have either of those but for the most basic of mechanics I'm sure they're the same except for the names of some of the resources. Now, in Mutant Chronicles, despite the name, you need more than 2d20, you also need a d6 and some spare d20s are helpful. The D6 in MC is the Dark Symmetry Die and you roll it when required, I'll touch on it in a later post. Now the core of the system, to run a skill check, you take the character's Attribute, add the appropriate skill, and then try to roll under that number on at least one of the two d20s. Every die that comes up under the number is a success. There are ways to earn more than two successes. The first of those is Focus. If you have Focus in a skill it denotes a die range that if you meet that you score an additional success. The second of those are Talents and special training (from your Corporation) that can grant additional successes, but that's chargen and advancement and so beyond the scope of this post. Another way for players to earn more successes is expend a Chronicle Point (which refresh at the beginning of the session) to place an autosuccess d20 in your roll. You simply take a spare d20, set it to 1, and place it on the table. In all other respects treat it as a rolled die (so Focus counts). The Final Way is the Darkest Way. If you can't succeed on a test, you may purchase up to 3 d20s to roll, adding a number of Dark Symmetry points to the pool equal to the number of dice purchased. This isn't recommended because the GM uses the Dark Symmetry pool to make bad things happen, like trigger your character flaws, make die rolls harder, or let NPCs use powerful Dark Symmetry abilities. Now if you do well enough on your test (get more successes than you need) you earn Momentum, which is primarily used to boost the results of the test like doing more damage in combat or getting more info from an informant. Look forward to part 2 of this post: How to Die Horribly (or Combat!)
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Jun 27, 2017 20:32
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Evil Mastermind posted:I don't have an answer for this, but now you've got me thinking about what a sci-fi SotDL would look like. Some sort of Event Horizon/40k-esque thing where the Demon Lord is leaking in from hyperspace or something, probably. That's sort of how it is in Godless. The Demon Lord's shadow falls on Earth and in addition to Mad Max raiders and poo poo you have to worry about demons and wizards. It's pretty rad.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:37
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Evil Mastermind posted:I don't have an answer for this, but now you've got me thinking about what a sci-fi SotDL would look like. Some sort of Event Horizon/40k-esque thing where the Demon Lord is leaking in from hyperspace or something, probably. Really, just Dark Heresy but without all the overblown 40k-ness and about 1/3 of the mechanical drag. I don't know how this forum feels about The Expanse - I don't feel too strongly about it either way - but add some horrors-from-beyond-the-stars in lieu of some of the politics and it'd work as a great SotDL space setting. Lots of dying suddenly and unceremoniously in an uncaring world.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:40
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Serf posted:That's sort of how it is in Godless. The Demon Lord's shadow falls on Earth and in addition to Mad Max raiders and poo poo you have to worry about demons and wizards. It's pretty rad. Rip_Van_Winkle posted:Really, just Dark Heresy but without all the overblown 40k-ness and about 1/3 of the mechanical drag. I don't know how this forum feels about The Expanse - I don't feel too strongly about it either way - but add some horrors-from-beyond-the-stars in lieu of some of the politics and it'd work as a great SotDL space setting. Lots of dying suddenly and unceremoniously in an uncaring world.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/misspixystix/status/878985945671909376 Wait, Str/Con split. Changed my mind.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:45
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yeah, I've read Godless and it's pretty baller. Take the time to watch the first season. You won't regret it, unless you really hate space politics (one-third of it).
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Jun 27, 2017 20:48
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yeah, I've read Godless and it's pretty baller. Shadow of the Demon Lord: Pandorum
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Jun 27, 2017 20:48
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Serf posted:The light side/dark side point system is one of the few things I actually liked about FFG Star Wars. The fiddly dice bullshit that bogs the game down and inane gear lists/spaceship stat nonsense was a big turnoff.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:51
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Serf posted:Shadow of the Demon Lord: Pandorum
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Jun 27, 2017 20:52
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Splicer posted:Would play.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:53
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Splicer posted:Would play. Still playing. It's got a FART stat, which is essential given that I'm going to use this for an SS13 RPG.
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Jun 27, 2017 23:08
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The dance rules will be useful for playing legal dramas.
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Jun 28, 2017 00:09
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Covok posted:Roll20 actually has a built in app that allows you to do that. Just set your character sheets to Star Wars Edge of the Empire and enable the API and everyone can roll the dice with aggregate symbols off their character sheets.
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Jun 28, 2017 00:22
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Rip_Van_Winkle posted:Speaking of SotDL, what's the closest equivalent in sci-fi games? Key points of interest: simple but crunchy mechanics, pretty lethal game, low-power/resource-starved PCs at least at first, quick character creation, general sense of being completely outmatched by the setting/enemies. I don't know poo poo about sci-fi games, my playgroups have always been fairly crunchy fantasy dorks, the furthest we've gotten is a couple 40k one-shots and some FFG SW games. That's Traveller. Character generation could be quicker, but that hits the rest of your points.
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Jun 28, 2017 02:45
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Part the Second (and last because going in more depth than this means I might as well do a F&F review and I don't have the stamina for that) Combat Combat rounds are a bit fluid in time, ranging from 10-20 seconds usually but capable of being extended to 1-2 minutes where warranted. Turn order is a bit different from a lot of RPGs, in that the players simply decide what order they will take their actions in, and then the GM takes their turn and does the same with NPCs. So a Turn Order might go like this
Now, on your turn you can perform Free Actions (we all know what a Free Action is), Restricted Actions (things you can't just do whenever, like unjam your gun or run for it), Standard Actions (your meat and potatoes of combat), and Response Actions (things you do when someone else tries to use a Standard Action on you). You can have as many Free Actions as you want, and you're limited to one Standard Action a turn unless you have special talents or spend a Chronicle Point to get more. Response Action are made as replies to Standard Actions by others and you only get One per turn. Response Actions use the skill Acrobatics, as well as in certain situations more active combat skills like Unarmed Combat for Retaliate or Ranged Weapon for Covering Fire. Response actions require the responding player to feed a Dark Symmetry point into the pool, but the opposite is also true for the GM, in order to dodge an attack they must expend a Dark Symmetry point. Movement uses both abstract Zones as well as narrative Ranges. So you may have a character who is in the Blue Car Zone which is a Long Range shot from the Balcony Zone. Damage is done via the Dark Symmetry die. The die is a normal six sided die or they have special ones available. On the die there are only three results that matter. 1 which is read as one, 2 which is read as two, and 6 which is read Dark Symmetry and results in a point being placed in the pool. 3 4 and 5 are ignored. A weapon will usually have multiple DS die in damage rating and having a high attribute in the Skill used like say Coordination for a CA-451 "Gehenna Puker" Heavy Plasma Flamer (uses the Heavy Weapons skill) gives you bonus damage on top of that, also in DS dice. Now let's do a quick example combat. To keep things (un)fair, we're outfitting Basic Bob with a Gehenna Puker, the skills to use it, and his opponent isn't wearing armor (armor soaks damage). Now, Bob rolls his 2d20, and gets a 9 and a 10, both successes! Good for Bob, bad for his nameless opponent. Since Bob was in Close Range he only needed 1 success, so the second goes straight to Momentum, which Bob immediately turns into damage. Things are not looking good for our nameless opponent, as the puker does 2 base damage and 6 DS dice worth of damage. Bob rolls 2,3,1,3,2,2 so that's a total of 9 damage, plus the added one bonus damage for 10. Now we need to see where that damage goes, since MC uses a hit location system complete with location specific damage. We got a 9, which is Torso, Now nameless here is kind of spindly, because you add together a person's Physique and Strength attributes to get their wounds by consulting the chart on page 71, and poor nameless, gutter trash that he is, has less than 10, so he has the lowest numbers there. Now the lowest number for Torso location is 5 Light Wounds, which the Puker just completely blasts through like he didn't even have them. Once you lose all your light wounds in a hit location any further damage to that location goes into Serious Wounds. Consulting page 71 again we see our boy nameless has 4 of those, so we just keep on flaming through. Once you run out of Serious Wounds in general you start taking Critical Damage. Now checking the chart one last time we see he has 2 of those, so our boy lives.... Except we have to see what horrible debilitating injuries he'll be left with for the... round before he burns to death because the Puker is an Incendiary 4 weapon, which means it burns the target for a minimum of 4 turns. Oooh, nameless rolled a 19, and then we add his one Critical point of damage and get the worst possible result on a Critical Injury roll of instant death on a 20. Player characters can actually stay in the fight by spending Chronicle Points if they get this result, but only until the end of the scene. Any time a character takes a wound of Critical damage you make this check. This is why you wear armor. If he'd been wearing even the cheapest torso armor (or at least been luckier) that shot would have left him alive. Extremely burned, but he'd have had a chance to put out the fire and live to fight another day. (The cheapest Torso Armor, Ballistic Cloth, stops 1 damage so he'd have avoided the critical injury). If this had hit him in the head or an arm (both 2 Wounds) he'd have just died outright from the damage. Mutant Chronicles combat is very lethal, because guns are good at doing damage, Wound pools are generally small and armor except the heaviest only provides a small amount of Soak. In addition unless you use your one Reaction for the round people are very easy to shoot at, it's a Difficulty 1 test modified up by range. Now I did chose the iconic Gehenna Puker for a reason, it's good at killing people, but there are plenty of deadly guns available even for more modest budgets and don't forget headshots are insanely deadly since they can blow right through an extremely small Light wound amount, all but the most extremely tough will have a head in the 2-4 range. And that's Mutant Chronicles in a nutshell. It's kind of a weird mix of the 40k RPG and it's own thing, which makes sense considering how MC originally came about.
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Jun 28, 2017 04:11
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Yawgmoth posted:Do they have a way to just type that poo poo into the chat window and roll it? Because as useful as it is for maps and tokens (i.e. just functional enough for no one to try to make anything better), it is absolute poo poo for sheets and I could roll and sort my own dice on my coffee table in the time it takes to click through their loving sheet macros. I don't know, I think they're pretty convienent.      
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Jun 28, 2017 04:29
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Probably because I'm currently infatuated with it, but you could run some dark stuff with Fragged Empire's mechanics. Make attribute healing even slower and you've made combat extra lethal.
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Jun 28, 2017 06:13
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Anyone here run Curse of Strahd? How close is it to the original module? Also, if anyone has played with the Roll20 mod, can I use those maps with any system if I kinda don't like 5e?
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Jun 28, 2017 15:39
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