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If you're looking for pulp, I'd check out Feng Shui 2.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:24
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It would be helpful if people prefaced their requests for systems with what they want mechanically. All that post really had to go on was the mention of Savage Worlds, which I haven't played but understand to mean "tactical combat + moderately in-depth charop in a pulp setting."
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Aug 4, 2017 00:32
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There's a whole thread for just that, indeed.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:34
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fool_of_sound posted:Arivia is a psycho but not entirely wrong here. There isn't much reason to use Strike if you arent planning tactical combat as the central mechanic. True, hence why I also pitched Cortex+ and Dogs in the Vineyard. When I see Pulp though, I definitely thing of action set-piece scenes with cool scenery interactions and neat powers. Am I wrong? Possibly! I've accounted for that. EDIT: fool_of_sound posted:If you're looking for pulp, I'd check out Feng Shui 2. This is also a really good suggestion TBH.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:35
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Arivia posted:Oh my god Strike has literally nothing to do with conspiracy gaming. Holy poo poo. It's a bad 4e clone. You're acting like the d20 fans back at the turn of the millennium - it's the only answer and perfect for everything! How many years since then have RPGs been working to prove that isn't true and you need to find a system that actually matches the game you want to play? The Strike cheerleading squad really needs to shut the gently caress up. Atomic Robo is looking good so far. I am however totally unfamiliar with the source material.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:42
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Helical Nightmares posted:Take a look at Conspiracy X. They have a mash up of UFOs, Atlanteans, demons, psychics, Men in Black, etc.. I tried to play a Con X campaign once (2nd edition, I think). It was bad. Obtuse, barely functional bad. Basically the epitome of 90's era design. Can't speak to the Unisystem version, but I can only imagine it's much better.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:42
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fool_of_sound posted:Arivia is a psycho but not entirely wrong here. There isn't much reason to use Strike if you arent planning tactical combat as the central mechanic. I'm not a goddamn psycho, come on. You might not like my opinions on tabletop gaming, but that doesn't necessitate that. Kai Tave posted:This dumbass grudge you have against Strike and/or the guy who wrote it is incredibly obnoxious and you sound like the person who constantly flipped their poo poo when people discussed anything that wasn't 13th Age or whatever their deal was. Strike's not great, but it's okay for the whole tactical combat bag. I know Trad Games goes in waves, but seeing Strike get treated as completely perfect and usable for everything is absurd. Again, that's not the general way people treat systems on this forum in general - Strike shouldn't be immune to that.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:47
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Arivia posted:I'm not a goddamn psycho I was referring to referring to your two dozen deeply held and vocal grudges in this one small subforum that you can't seem to get over
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Aug 4, 2017 00:53
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dwarf74 posted:I am not considering strike for this, but also please shut the gently caress up about strike. It's a good comic! But, seriously, I feel like the books would do better if they were less closely tied to the Robo-verse, as it totally works for other settings with a tiny bit of re-skinning. The way it handles skill bundles makes for better character creation and easier aspects than a lot of other FATE versions, and the SCIENCE! rules are quite good, but a lot of folks just skip it because it's tied to a property they don't know about/care for. OTOH, I find the stunt rules to be a little less than super-awesome, but that's mostly because I find FATE stunts to be poorly defined.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:58
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dwarf74 posted:please shut the gently caress up about strike.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:59
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Falstaff posted:I tried to play a Con X campaign once (2nd edition, I think). It was bad. Obtuse, barely functional bad. Basically the epitome of 90's era design. If it wasn't Unisystem then you were playing the first edition. Conspiracy X 2.0 uses a "non-cinematic" version of the Unisystem which is essentially a "roll dX, add to your skill number, meet or beat a set TN" kind of system with edges and flaws, it's nothing that's really going to set the world on fire, it's serviceable and probably has some flaws but I've never played a Unisystem game long enough to really crack into it. Its 2.5 interesting mechanical subsystems are: 1). Collective base building, putting together your clandestine MIB safehouse with your buds. 2). Pulling strings. Basically every character that's recruited into the Good Guy-ish Conspiracy are picked from a variety of military, intelligence, and governmental agencies, many of which have three-letter acronyms for names, as well as some departments that are made up altogether in addition to highly skilled civilians who wind up dragged into things for this or that reason. As a result, everybody has a number of favors, contacts, and abilities related to their "day job" that they can draw upon, which are given a standardized format and rule framework for drawing upon them. This can range from something as mundane as being able to use the CDC's labs to analyze a mysterious virus to something more dramatic like being able to call in a SWAT team on someone, to things like accessing special CIA supply caches, requisitioning alien technology, all the way up to calling in an orbital strike using one of the US government's two top-secret weaponized satellites to drop a tungsten puck on someone with enough force to vaporize a city block. I like that they took the time to specifically mechanize the process of drawing upon these sorts of favors and privileges which is a thing you'd expect to happen a lot in the sort of milieu the game wants to live in. 2.5). It's nothing major, but there's an optional system for psychic powers (one that was brought over from the first edition of the game) where you use a deck of Zener cards (i.e. those cards from the bit in Ghostbusters where Peter Venkman is electrocuting a hapless undergrad) to determine how successful you are. It's gimmicky, but it's fun to do at least once Arivia posted:Strike's not great, but it's okay for the whole tactical combat bag. I know Trad Games goes in waves, but seeing Strike get treated as completely perfect and usable for everything is absurd. Again, that's not the general way people treat systems on this forum in general - Strike shouldn't be immune to that. Literally nobody here cares about some kind of Elevated Tradgames Discourse level, especially in the general chat thread, especially when it comes from someone who rolls in whenever someone namedrops a game you have an axe to grind against to tell everybody to shut the gently caress up about it. You are getting way worked up about something that doesn't matter and acting like an rear end in a top hat about it. Someone else managed to explain why Strike might not be a great choice and they didn't need to throw a fit in order to do it. This is a you problem, not an everyone else problem. dwarf74 posted:I am not considering strike for this, but also please shut the gently caress up about strike. Knowledge of the source material is very much not a requirement as far as the Atomic Robo RPG goes, you can easily ignore all of it and you still have what I would consider one of the most mechanically refined versions of Fate on the market.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:02
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dwarf74 posted:I am not considering strike for this, but also please shut the gently caress up about strike.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:02
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Arivia posted:Strike's not great, but it's okay for the whole tactical combat bag. I know Trad Games goes in waves, but seeing Strike get treated as completely perfect and usable for everything is absurd. Again, that's not the general way people treat systems on this forum in general - Strike shouldn't be immune to that. yerrout!
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Aug 4, 2017 01:03
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dwarf74 posted:I am not considering strike for this, but also please shut the gently caress up about strike. I will say that the games I've run with it had nothing to do with the comic. But it could be a little too pulpy depending on your tastes. It tends more towards action and adventure, but the brainstorming mechanic is something I've used for investigation scenes as well, so there's that. Cortex has been mentioned, and could suit your needs, but it might need some light to moderate hacking. Straight up Trail of Cthulhu also ain't bad, but predictably is more focused on the horror aspect of things. Maybe using the pulp rules? Comedy option: d20 Modern.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:15
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My big issue with Cortex is that it's pretty opaque. Not hard to use, it's just a system where it's never been very clear to me what constitutes a good mechanical decision from moment to moment as opposed to a less advantageous one...do I keep this big die, do I split it into several smaller dice, do I pay a point to reroll or add additional dice, etc. As a result my experiences with it have often just felt like "eh, roll a bunch of dice and something happens I guess?" I guess that might not be a concern for some depending on what they're looking for but I can't say I found it very satisfying from a player's standpoint.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:30
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Original Conspiracy X has a system where skills ranks and difficulty TNs come in IIRC 1-5 and based on the difference between your stat and the TN, either you auto-succeed, you auto-fail, or you need to roll under 7 or 4. Also a lot of tests are modified by another stat, which modifies the TN by -2 to +2 depending on its rank. Also also, there are six different injury types (Flesh, Wound, Splatter, Bruise, Thwack, and Break) and there's a chart that explains all the different things each damage type affects. And you can stage damage up or down between types.I got yelled at like twenty years ago on RPG.net for saying the system was crap but I was TOTALLY RIGHT. Anyway, yeah, Conspiracy X has a sweet setting but for the love of God play the Unisystem or GURPS version.
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Aug 4, 2017 03:46
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Yawgmoth posted:this but to everyone all the time no
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Aug 4, 2017 04:02
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Arivia posted:Oh my god Strike has literally nothing to do with conspiracy gaming. Holy poo poo. It's a bad 4e clone. You're acting like the d20 fans back at the turn of the millennium - it's the only answer and perfect for everything! How many years since then have RPGs been working to prove that isn't true and you need to find a system that actually matches the game you want to play? The Strike cheerleading squad really needs to shut the gently caress up. 
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Aug 4, 2017 05:04
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ImpactVector posted:I think it's at least halfway legit when the game the OP starts from is Savage Worlds, another game with a sizable page count devoted to tactical combat. It's also pretty legit when you take context into account and realize that dwarf74 is someone with a lot of experience running D&D4E under his belt so the potential argument of "but Strike forces you to reskin everything" is nothing he isn't familiar with and capable of doing if it's the game he's after (which it isn't so whatever). There's also a game called Hollow Earth Expedition. I have never played it or even read it so it could be complete fuckin garbage for all I know, apparently it uses some kind of dice pool system where evens count as successes and odds count as nothing, beyond that I have no earthly idea how good it is, but it's definitely a game that exists.
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Aug 4, 2017 05:10
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I'm sure people have asked this a whole lot, but: I'm looking for an awesome actual play podcast and/or YouTube series or anything like that. But specifically, I want to see an awesome GM at work. I feel like I used to be a much better GM than I am now, but I'm severely out of practice and having a hard time getting back into the groove of it all, so I could use some inspiration. Are there any actual play series you've watched/listened to that just made you go "god drat I wish that was my GM?"
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Aug 4, 2017 14:27
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Friends at the Table, definitely. Not to spoil anything too much, but Austin Walker takes a joke about Zombie Pirates and makes it a through-line of the campaign and it's cosmology.
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Aug 4, 2017 14:31
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Harrow posted:I'm sure people have asked this a whole lot, but: I'm looking for an awesome actual play podcast and/or YouTube series or anything like that. RPPR's God's Teeth Delta Green campaign, GM'ed by Caleb Stokes was so good and yet so intimidating because I knew I could never be that good.
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Aug 4, 2017 14:37
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Mr. Maltose posted:Friends at the Table, definitely. Not to spoil anything too much, but Austin Walker takes a joke about Zombie Pirates and makes it a through-line of the campaign and it's cosmology. Austin is pretty much everything I want in a GM.
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Aug 4, 2017 14:48
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Harrow posted:I'm sure people have asked this a whole lot, but: I'm looking for an awesome actual play podcast and/or YouTube series or anything like that. I like Godsfall a lot and think the GM is excellent, even though he has a number of "GM PC talks to NPC" conversations which are a pet peeve of mine. Great editing too, very listenable.
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Aug 4, 2017 14:52
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Thanks for the recommendations! Got some at-work listening to do today.
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Aug 4, 2017 15:07
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Kai Tave posted:It's also pretty legit when you take context into account and realize that dwarf74 is someone with a lot of experience running D&D4E under his belt so the potential argument of "but Strike forces you to reskin everything" is nothing he isn't familiar with and capable of doing if it's the game he's after (which it isn't so whatever). Strike was a totally reasonable suggestion, since I didn't really specify that tactical combat wasn't what I was looking for, here. I get plenty of that in my 4e games, and I prefer to switch up styles regularly. quote:There's also a game called Hollow Earth Expedition. I have never played it or even read it so it could be complete fuckin garbage for all I know, apparently it uses some kind of dice pool system where evens count as successes and odds count as nothing, beyond that I have no earthly idea how good it is, but it's definitely a game that exists.
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Aug 4, 2017 16:30
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Pope Guilty posted:Original Conspiracy X has a system where skills ranks and difficulty TNs come in IIRC 1-5 and based on the difference between your stat and the TN, either you auto-succeed, you auto-fail, or you need to roll under 7 or 4. Also a lot of tests are modified by another stat, which modifies the TN by -2 to +2 depending on its rank. Also also, there are six different injury types (Flesh, Wound, Splatter, Bruise, Thwack, and Break) and there's a chart that explains all the different things each damage type affects. And you can stage damage up or down between types.I got yelled at like twenty years ago on RPG.net for saying the system was crap but I was TOTALLY RIGHT. I think you just gave me the RPG equivalent of a 'Nam flashback.
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Aug 4, 2017 17:49
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Kai Tave posted:It's also pretty legit when you take context into account and realize that dwarf74 is someone with a lot of experience running D&D4E under his belt so the potential argument of "but Strike forces you to reskin everything" is nothing he isn't familiar with and capable of doing if it's the game he's after (which it isn't so whatever). Hollow Earth is good and relatively simple, but it's sort of like Savage Worlds in the sense that it has a lot of weird crunch tossed in to make the relatively simple resolution a lot more complicated. It also uses the same "base stat + skill + talents" idea for characters, and it's surprisingly easy to make characters that don't function as intended. I would not recommend it over Atomic Robo for pulp unless your group is anti-Fate.
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Aug 4, 2017 17:55
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Mr. Maltose posted:Friends at the Table, definitely. Not to spoil anything too much, but Austin Walker takes a joke about Zombie Pirates and makes it a through-line of the campaign and it's cosmology. Harrow posted:Thanks for the recommendations! Got some at-work listening to do today. Here's some things to be aware about Austin Walker's GMing and its context, if you're listening for self-improvement purposes. Austin's players are, mostly, terrible for the kinds of games he wants to run, and this forces him to do the heavy lifting. Their COUNTER//Weight game, for example, is a cyberpunk / noir / "Real Robots" mecha anime thing with a tone that is clearly meant to be serious, thoughtful, and emotionally engaged. Instead, two of his four players are constantly cracking jokes (because one is a literal comedian), and one is quite shy and needs to break the tension of any emotional scene or difficult choice by laughing. None of them read the rules. All this is to say that Austin has lofty aspirations for these games, but he is "forced" to get there by dragging the tone - and frequently the players - kicking and screaming to where he wants it to be. Sometimes his decisiveness is admirable, but often he ends up railroading his players and essentially making the big choices for them. He'll also frequently talk over them, even more so than is understandable for a Skype game, and narrate for them rather than turn that authority over to the player who really should have it. These are bad habits, but it's understandable why he has them. Since you're looking for recommendations, here's my counter-example to everything above: Blades in the Dark - Bloodletters. BitD in general is about crews of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city, and Bloodletters is the "home campaign" of the game's creator, John Harper. John is a killer GM in both senses of the word: he maintains a high standard of play, while also playing hardball with his (completely bought-in and quite capable) players. That's a hard balance to strike, and it's worth watching him run games just to see how he manages it. There's also The Jank Cast, which has a rotating crew of GMs who are all consistently excellent. These are the people you want to listen to if you're playing games with real emotional stakes, with players who generally manage to police their tone and be proactive. They run a lot of stuff, mostly indie / small-press games from Monsterhearts to Kagematsu. If you like Apocalypse World, then a intro point is their two-part AW game, Leviathan and Black Diamond. Leviathan is set on a decaying airship trying to keep its freedom from an empire emerging from the ruins of the old world, raiding settlements for supplies with a band of vicious but oddly sympathetic kids on motorized gliders. Black Diamond is the follow-up to Leviathan, set ten years later when the survivors settle in an abandoned ski lodge, try to live a normal life and move past the traumas incurred during Leviathan, and only manage to gently caress up their lives even more. Finally, in the vein of "Great GM with mediocre to terrible players," there's everything Adam Koebel has ever run on Roll20 Presents or RollPlay. You can take your pick there: from D&D, Shadowrun, and Stars Without Number on RollPlay, to Burning Wheel (several times), The Sprawl, Mage: the Ascension, Apocalypse World, and Yet More D&D on Roll20. Adam knows he has players who aren't exactly virtuosos, but he's better at coaxing them into organic responses and decision-making than Austin, probably because he has no grand narrative he wants to see enacted. He also runs Office Hours, a GM-focused advice show that is actually worth your time, and occasionally streams his prep.
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Aug 4, 2017 18:56
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One hundred percent disagree on the idea that Friends at the Table are "terrible players".
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Aug 4, 2017 19:09
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Harrow posted:I'm sure people have asked this a whole lot, but: I'm looking for an awesome actual play podcast and/or YouTube series or anything like that. There's a bunch of japanese pathfinder review vids I saw and their entertainment value is amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHnGvdlmZEU
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Aug 4, 2017 19:17
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Mr. Maltose posted:One hundred percent disagree on the idea that Friends at the Table are "terrible players". Terrible players for the kind of game Austin wants to run, as stated above. If you can't maintain the tone of the game, or worse yet, you actively undermine it, you're failing as a player. Edit: Tone is a group responsibility, but part of that responsibility is on the GM to know what their group is capable of and plan accordingly. His players either can't or won't live up to his vision of how these games should be, but frankly, Austin should know better at this point. Kestral fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 19:25
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I feel like Austin's tendency towards this deep, meaningful and sad type of story is well-tempered by his players who counter it with comedy. I enjoy that balance.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:27
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And I don't think these players undermine the game's tones? COUNTER/Weight had them hard bounce off Technoir, but all of the memorable poo poo from say Winter in Heiron is directly from Austin reacting to the work and the decisions his players make. Like, to use an example from Austin Walker's Favorite Anime, even 8th MS Team had jokes in between the horrors of jungle warfare with giant robots.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:27
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I mean, are the players making in-character jokes, or are they loving around out-of-character and/or injecting setting elements that clash with the tone? Or is it something where the GM is clearly doing one thing and all of his players are doing another thing, so it's more like he's just not really GMing what the players want to play? (If it's not obvious, I haven't listened to Friends at the Table yet or these things would probably be pretty obvious)
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Aug 4, 2017 19:32
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The thing is, problems of "They tell jokes or laugh like normal human beings instead of being stone faced vigil to these tragedies" aside, one thing Friends at the Table does really, really well is having a significant player buy in to the settings. Every set of games they run begins with an episode that's literally just collaboratively working out the setting from broad strokes down to the individual characters. They just recently started a new campaign where everyone basically built a god and their society except that the gods are space robots and it's a future-utopia that's in the process of becoming unsustainable.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:37
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Serf posted:I feel like Austin's tendency towards this deep, meaningful and sad type of story is well-tempered by his players who counter it with comedy. I enjoy that balance. Whereas I find it incredibly jarring and dissonant. Moments of levity are great, but they're a strong spice. Mr. Maltose posted:And I don't think these players undermine the game's tones? COUNTER/Weight had them hard bounce off Technoir, but all of the memorable poo poo from say Winter in Heiron is directly from Austin reacting to the work and the decisions his players make. See the strong spice comment above. But let's look at COUNTER/Weight for a minute - I can't comment on Winter in Heiron, having not yet listened to it. I'm just gonna throw some things out here: Drillbot Taylor. LAZER TED. Jerry. Cass's torrent of fish puns. A person playing a pop idol mecha pilot with a Burning Spirit of Hope and Justice who is too quiet and passive to actually portray any of that. More, what meaningful decisions did his players actually make without Austin's fairly heavy-handed prompting? Harrow posted:I mean, are the players making in-character jokes, or are they loving around out-of-character and/or injecting setting elements that clash with the tone? Both, and... Harrow posted:Or is it something where the GM is clearly doing one thing and all of his players are doing another thing, so it's more like he's just not really GMing what the players want to play? This, to an extent. With the example of COUNTER/Weight, he has two players who, as Mr. Maltose points out, ostensibly bought into the setting via collaborative setting generation, but in practice don't seem to care about playing in that genre, and another who does, but doesn't have enough presence to overcome the other two. It's really just Austin and one other guy sticking hard to the premise they all bought in to, and trying to play around the goofballs. And in fairness, most groups have had this happen, right? You decide to do a game with a certain tone to it, and it ends up being a bad fit for the group because they aren't all invested in maintaining that. Shadowrun in particular is notorious for this. I'm hard on Austin for this because he keeps making the same mistake.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:47
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Lazer Ted is a national treasure. Also it's cool and good that you insist that Ali was playing her character wrong all the time by being too quiet and passive that's not weird at all. Like, the idea this poo poo is against Austin's True Spirit of the game kind of misses all the various terrible and great jokes Austin drops loving constantly in his own game. Mr. Maltose fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 19:50
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Kestral posted:And in fairness, most groups have had this happen, right? You decide to do a game with a certain tone to it, and it ends up being a bad fit for the group because they aren't all invested in maintaining that. Shadowrun in particular is notorious for this. I'm hard on Austin for this because he keeps making the same mistake. I can really relate to that because I do the same thing. I always have some sort of lofty goal, even if I try to convince myself I don't, and I always end up at least a little disappointed, but it's my own drat fault. I'm about to try a grand experiment where I run two campaigns: one is an ongoing Strike campaign that is irreversibly silly, partially because that's just who the players are so whatever, and the other is going to be a Fragged Empire game that I'm trying to get buy-in right away for something with a relatively grounded tone. And by "grounded," I mean "playing characters who feel like they belong in this world and behave like remotely-believable people given their circumstances." At least a couple of my players really want to do that, and two more think it might be fun, so we're going to find out in a couple weeks whether it can stick. I'm definitely not asking for stone-faced seriousness, just coherent characters and, when there's levity, it should make sense in-universe. (Obviously we're all friends so there will be out-of-character joking around, that's both inevitable and welcome, but the goal is to not let that overwhelm the game itself.) I plan to keep the other game going to keep playing with the couple of players who don't have any interest in "serious" roleplaying and also to let everyone else get the silly out of their systems in between the more grounded games. Harrow fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 19:54
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I will say that all the FaaT games start lighter and then as time passes the narrative tends to get more focused as stakes have escalated.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:58
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