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I forgot to mention Fantasy Craft. Was that the one that took 3e to its logical conclusion so that noncasters were basically youxia?
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Aug 10, 2017 17:09
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What was the "Rolling Thunder" distribution system? And why was it given such a silly name
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Aug 10, 2017 17:18
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I'm pretty sure Burning Sands was killed by the decision to dump a bunch of card designs from Five Rings into it without play testing them in the new system. Blacksmith anyone?
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Aug 10, 2017 17:20
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Halloween Jack posted:I forgot to mention Fantasy Craft. Was that the one that took 3e to its logical conclusion so that noncasters were basically youxia? Fantasy Craft is probably my favorite system to run D&D in. Martials actually can meaningfully contribute, spellcasters don't (in my experience) run roughshod over the game. I'm running 5e right now for an online campaign mostly because the other players wanted to.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:47
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Xarbala posted:What was the "Rolling Thunder" distribution system? The new rarity scheme was actually worse for players, and because each set was based around a faction, some factions lagged months behind others in getting new core cards (strongholds, et cetera). Ostensibly, the reasoning was that the staggered release schedule was easier on players' wallets and didn't force them to hunt for rares. Much later, Dancey candidly admitted that he realized the market was flooded with CCGs, and a lot of retailers had a de facto policy of ordering one case of everything to see how it sold. Rolling Thunder was a scheme to make sure every set got on the shelf in every store.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:48
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Xarbala posted:What was the "Rolling Thunder" distribution system? edit: ^^ this interview is the source of the comment about stores ordering one of every SKU. quote:In the summer of '96, we released Forbidden Knowledge, the second L5R expansion. It consisted solely of boosters - no decks. To our surprise, initial orders for FK were half of what the orders had been for Shadowlands, despite the fact that the game was clearly doing far better than it had been when Shadowlands was released. After a few minutes of digging, we released that orders for boosters were actually up slightly from the Shadowlands release - the gap was derived almost completely from the lack of deck product! Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 17:48
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Ugh, sorry to hear. Some of the Akron boardgame groups are more active if you're willing to make a bit of a drive (they just have a tendency to meet up on days I can't attend), but I don't know how much of a run that'd be for you. I'm about 30-45 minutes south of Akron/Cuyahoga Falls now. If they meet during the week I for sure can't attend stupid second shift life.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:52
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, one thing that was a relief when I recently made a Fantasy Craft character was the fact they put all the basic combat actions summarized on page 2 of the sheet, which is nice because unlike vanilla d20, a lot of combat actions are keyed to different skills instead of mostly just being tied to Attack Bonus. Ah, I must be blurring the Rolling Thunder stuff with all the backlash from the time he got hired to implement some weird scheme in EVE online and it went as well as you'd expect.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:15
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Nuns with Guns posted:Ah, I must be blurring the Rolling Thunder stuff with all the backlash from the time he got hired to implement some weird scheme in EVE online and it went as well as you'd expect. I wish I could make a career out of failing big like he does.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:32
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In response to the comment of how hard it can be to learn a new system. I do find it depends. For example, Chuubo's and Fragged Empire we're super hard for me to learn and this is coming from someone who regularly plays games like that and regularly learns new games. Eclipse phase is also a bit difficult to learn. To be fair I don't even know if I really know the games I just listed. On the other hand, I picked up all the PBTA games I've ever played in seconds D20 is quick to learn and a lot of smaller systems like OVA, teenagers from outer space, and Tenra Basho Zero where is it learn. I actually think that I gets harder to learn new systems the more new systems you know. There's only so many things you can remember in that level of detail and you actually start to forget older systems when you learn new ones. That's a problem I've been running into recently. I have some free time so I thought I'd experiment with some games I never got to play but it's actually harder to learn them because I already know so many.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:52
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Chuubo is hugely confusing for everyone. Honestly I think part of the issue is that you spend a while learning a new system then find it's just as broken as the old one. That happened in our group with EotE. And it creates burn out really quick.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:02
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hyphz posted:Chuubo is hugely confusing for everyone. It's funny you say that because it's absolutely true. I didn't think about it before but you're absolutely right. I've been running a lot of Fantasy Flight Star Wars and one thing that has kind of made me go "ugh" is how much the Star Wars Discord has told me that the game is broken in some areas like crafting and apparently the slicer sucks. Then you get into an overly critical eye that reveals that the system is just as bad as every other system. And your enthusiasm goes down. I don't think I played 13th Age since the time our game master had an almost nervous breakdown ( not a real one of course, but she basically broke down when one of our optimizers decimated an encounter in one hit) because somebody found a way to break the game with something anyone could do: the wizard Talent evocation apparently was super broken and allowed her to destroy whatever the game master threw at her. That plus how much the monk sucks and how much the fighter sucks (both classes that I fixed and seems that has become the de facto version people like to use now) has made me so mellow on a game I love a lot that I haven't even picked it up since then. And I swear the same thing has happened with a bunch of other games.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:53
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What are the good sword-and-sorcery GM-less games for more than a single session? I've been looking around and all the real good ones seem to be one-offs.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:10
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Gloomhaven
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Aug 10, 2017 20:11
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Countblanc posted:Gloomhaven I just realized I should probably post in the "what system thread" but that game looks like it owns, thank you.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:15
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It's cool, and the creator actually mentioned in an AMA that a lot of the design inspirations came from D&D 4e which feels obvious once you play the game. It's still its own beast though and it does GM-less combat (arguably fantasy combat period) better than any game I've played, board or tabletop. If it looks interesting I recommend preordering it sooner rather than later as I'd be shocked if it didn't sell out its second print run relatively quickly.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:18
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I agree that Fragged Empire is easy to reference, but kind of tricky to learn. The tripping point for me was gear. I've been reading through Strike!, and I find it pretty difficult. It's very flexible, but the price of that is that it feels like it's half a guide to creating your own game.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:19
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Halloween Jack posted:I forgot to mention Fantasy Craft. Was that the one that took 3e to its logical conclusion so that noncasters were basically youxia? Not quite, but casters are a lot weaker and more reliable, while noncasters generally get a lot more options and special moves of their own. It's nothing on the level of Book of Nine Swords (which is closer to what you're thinking of), but they get upped in competency a fair deal. It's a bit long in the tooth these days but it's still a good example of how you could can revise d20 to be more balanced in terms of options and playstyles. Covok posted:For example, Chuubo's and Fragged Empire we're super hard for me to learn and this is coming from someone who regularly plays games like that and regularly learns new games. Eclipse phase is also a bit difficult to learn. To be fair I don't even know if I really know the games I just listed. Chuubo's is just a very - well, I'll just say it's an exceptionally awful book in terms of clarity and instruction. One of the worst RPG books out there in that regard, frankly. Fragged Empire is relatively obtusely written as well, structured more like a reference manual than an instructional one. Which is good for play, but bad for learning. Neither is a bad game, mind, but they both have notable issues in presenting their material. I'd say that's more on those games themselves than anything else.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:20
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Halloween Jack posted:I've been reading through Strike!, and I find it pretty difficult. It's very flexible, but the price of that is that it feels like it's half a guide to creating your own game. My solution to the wishy-washy nonsense of Strike!'s non-combat mechanics is to have as little non-combat content as possible. The main draw of the system for me is that it's a 4E clone where you can invent new monsters and throw together a perfectly functional and relatively balanced encounter in like 20 minutes.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:21
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Isn't Fragged an incredibly more complicated take on PBTA?
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Aug 10, 2017 20:24
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mango sentinel posted:Isn't Fragged an incredibly more complicated take on PBTA? Not in the slightest. Fragged Empire uses a 3D6 resolution system plus stat and takes a lot more from 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons then it does Powered by the Apocalypse. I actually can't think of a single thing in Fragged Empire that bare similarity to powered by the Apocalypse.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:32
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Chuubo's seems to be the closest thing a tabletop game has come to a closet drama, where your ability to read and be amazed by system and setting is far more important that the actually playing of a game.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:32
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Halloween Jack posted:I've been reading through Strike!, and I find it pretty difficult. It's very flexible, but the price of that is that it feels like it's half a guide to creating your own game.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:33
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Mr. Maltose posted:Chuubo's seems to be the closest thing a tabletop game has come to a closet drama, where your ability to read and be amazed by system and setting is far more important that the actually playing of a game. I've run chuubo before. It went really well. I didn't really use anything too complicated like miraculous abilities cuz I didn't understand them. But it worked really well for what it's supposed to be: the game design to play shows like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and such.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:38
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Yawgmoth posted:That's pretty much how I felt about it. It's less "here is a game to play" and 100% "here are some mechanics I wrote, maybe you can use them to make a game if you don't get sick of my editorializing first!" Also, some dad jokes thrown in there too. You got to put up a with a lot of dad jokes in the book itself.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:40
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I mean, the mechanics themselves are great; it's what I need to use a 4e style base for a superhero or military sci-fi game, which I've been wanting to do for some time. But just reading through it I get mired in the non-combat stuff.Covok posted:Not in the slightest. Fragged Empire uses a 3D6 resolution system plus stat and takes a lot more from 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons then it does Powered by the Apocalypse. I actually can't think of a single thing in Fragged Empire that bare similarity to powered by the Apocalypse.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:40
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I mean, people have performed Faust too. I'm not saying that the game is UNplayable, but that it seems that ease of play was not the foremost goal. EDIT: and it's a bit unfair of me to say it's the closest thing to when other games far more up their own rear end about things exist, to be fair. Mr. Maltose fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 20:41
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Halloween Jack posted:I mean, the mechanics themselves are great; it's what I need to use a 4e style base for a superhero or military sci-fi game, which I've been wanting to do for some time. But just reading through it I get mired in the non-combat stuff. The non-combat stuff definitely asks the whole group to be firing on all cylinders to keep it working properly, like Fate or something. I've strayed towards keeping my non-combat stuff in Strike kinda freeform, using the skill rolls and conditions and that's about it.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:42
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Mr. Maltose posted:I mean, people have performed Faust too. I'm not saying that the game is UNplayable, but that it seems that ease of play was not the foremost goal. I think what happened is she assumed everyone who would back the kickstarter and buy the game played Nobilis 3rd Edition because this game runs on the same system. Also, she's never been that great at explaining rules, but good at making them.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:43
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Dad jokes are a plus! The haphazard selection of kits and backgrounds for incompatible settings however is not, all it did was confuse my players and make me look like an rear end in a top hat if I asked them to come up with something of their own rather than just picking something pre-made but nonsensical. I ended up excising kits entirely and running my only full-length Strike! game as a sort of meta "all genres of cheap paperback fiction exist in a closely intertwined multiverse" which was a fun enough concept while it lasted but honestly I think the game would've been better off if it had just committed to a moderately specific setting. It already has a pretty distinct tone and flavor from the way abilities are named and the kind of gameplay the mechanics promote.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:45
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Halloween Jack posted:Uh, the modular nature of gear is sort of like the tags in Apocalypse World...that's all I got. Not really. Powered by the Apocalypse has a narrative stats that have no effect on the mechanics, Fragged Empire has tags that are a completely mechanical and only somewhat narrative.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:45
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Mr. Maltose posted:Chuubo's seems to be the closest thing a tabletop game has come to a closet drama, where your ability to read and be amazed by system and setting is far more important that the actually playing of a game. Like in Immortal, for example, imagine if you were playing a Vampire/Wraith/Changeling hybrid in the WoD, and had to constantly worry about the rules for Humanity, Banality, Angst, frenzy, and being affected by stuff in three different planes of reality, all the loving time. And I haven't looked deeply into them, but Eoris and Anima both strike me as games meant to be admired and not played.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:48
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Yeah, I mean immediately after I posted that I remembered THE SECRET FIRE existed and recant that. I think that Chuubo's is more like a closet drama than those games though because the mechanics are actually interesting and innovative and fun to examine but good luck actually using the book to run a game as written.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:51
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From what I've read so far of Eoris, it's just up its own rear end in a top hat tinkering with metaphysical word salad but has yet to provide any clue as to what the actual premise of the game is. I'm sure it must at some point, I need to get back to reading it.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:52
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Anima: Beyond Fantasy is very much 'Look at all these fancy Korean artists we hired to illustrate our Rolemaster House rules". (That may be unfair. It's closer to a Rolemaster-lite like MERP but.) Also multiple layers of setting background that not only players would never know or interact with but is completely extraneous to running the game.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:54
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Dad jokes are a plus! That's the inevitable problem for a generic system with moderate to severe amount of crunch and no supplements built for particular genre. Imagine trying to run Savage World using only the $10 book and you'd run into the same problem. Halloween Jack posted:Oh, no way. I could think of several games that are more guilty of that. Like, I mentioned Everlasting and Immortal, two games that have so many setting elements with mechanical impact that if you try to actually incorporate all of them into play, the game will be totally bogged down. I once knew a guy who tried to run Anime:Beyond Fantasy. My roommate was in the game. I looked at that character sheet and all I can think is "you made a mistake." Never said anything because my roommate had paper thin skin and took everything as an insult, but he hosed up agreeing to be in that game. You have to actually Define how much damage you do at every percentage from -400% to + 400%. My mathematician friend pointed out that you can do this whole thing with a simple formula and not use a paper sized chart. And that's just one element. Also, anything that needs to be referenced at every damage roll should be simple enough to not bog things down. Otherwise, it leads to burn out. I never saw what happened to that game, but the games that they were in always sounded like they were terrible and unfun for everyone involved and everyone just stayed due to social inertia.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:55
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Mr. Maltose posted:Yeah, I mean immediately after I posted that I remembered THE SECRET FIRE existed and recant that. I think that Chuubo's is more like a closet drama than those games though because the mechanics are actually interesting and innovative and fun to examine but good luck actually using the book to run a game as written. The systems all slot together really well in a way that, once you get used to ti, isn't nearly as complicated as it looks. The problem is just... jenna needs like 4 editors. I've played in a game before that was good, and I've even been mooting gming one now that I understand the mechanics better .
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Aug 10, 2017 21:01
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If you can get a copy and you want to play Chuubo's, find a copy of nobilis 3rd Edition. It might do a better job of explaining the basics. Maybe. Mileage may vary.
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Aug 10, 2017 21:02
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Covok posted:the games that they were in always sounded like they were terrible and unfun for everyone involved and everyone just stayed due to social inertia.
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Aug 10, 2017 21:03
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Yawgmoth posted:I am so, SO glad I got over doing that when I was like 16. I just do not have the patience to stick with a game I'm not enjoying. They would constantly talk about playing purposely bad games just to see how badly they could break it, but it always sound like that only happened because they didn't understand what the gently caress they were doing. Like, they wanted to play dungeon world. I offered my roommate my copy of the book. He was the game master. He refused repeatedly. I told him you can't just run it from the player packet and there are a lot of specific things that you need to know about the game because it doesn't run like most role playing games. He told me I was stupid and he can handle it. I heard his game was full of plus one magical items, that he had too costly boost the party to deal with the ridiculous enemies he was making that had hundreds of HP and were near impossible to hit, and he had added some kind of D100 table of random things to happen when you use a spell. For those who never played Dungeon world, none of that made sense as those are problems that should never happen. You're never supposed to get magic items that increase your stats because that breaks the game cuz it's a low numbers game so magic items just giving you new abilities, enemies are equally hard to hit regardless of who they are and the difficulty is supposed to come from the environment, and you never supposed to use a D100 because that's not even one of the dice in the game: the game uses 2D6 for resolution and D&D dice for damage and table should be used as special moves using 2D6. And it wasn't just weird mechanics. One of my friends was in the game and said she didn't like it because she was punished for saving an orphanage from a fire because she asked for a reward meaning she was greedy. I told her just to quit if she didn't have fun but she didn't want to do it. Nerd social fallacy at work. Edit: He probably thought he could run without the book because he played in a game of it run by one of my friends. But, that friend also refused to read the book because of the same reasons (thinking their experience with D&D was enough) and also ran to a bunch of problems that killed the game. I remember specifically not only offering the book to that friend but also the excellent GM's guide made by fans and officially endorsed. It amazes me how much people refuse to read the loving manual then blame the game. Covok fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 21:11
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