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Yeah, the design and organization of FE is amazing. The intro videos are pretty good too.
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Aug 31, 2017 15:55
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I have taken several cracks at Fragged Empire now and I find it to be just impenetrable. Burning Wheel was easier to understand for me.
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Aug 31, 2017 15:56
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FE is better set up for reference than for learning, I'll tell you what. I got tripped up on spending resources and gear.Bieeardo posted:God. Those kobold fights in Pool of Radiance. The battle in their warren was epic, though I'm still not sure where that handful of trolls came from.
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Aug 31, 2017 15:57
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Halloween Jack posted:FE is better set up for reference than for learning, I'll tell you what. I got tripped up on spending resources and gear. Once you do know the system, the book is pretty good for character creation because all the tables are collected in the back of the book. But the first time through, you do a lot of flipping back and forth to understand what the options mean. Lemon-Lime posted:Not really. Neuromancer is about low-lives running a series of heists and backstabbing each other, not about a party of heavily-armed and -armoured killers treating corporate arcologies like D&D dungeons. To be honest I have far greater distaste for reductive definitions of cyberpunk than I do for cyberpunk works that aren't "punk" enough. Most of them are bad because they're written by hacks, and most of the sufficiently punk cyberpunk works are also bad for the same reason, not because they fail to check all the boxes on some list of tropes. You don't see this same snobbish response to post-apocalyptic stories, for example - people don't say Mad Max or Turbo Kid "aren't really post-apocalyptic" because they aren't as grim as The Road. You could run Thundarr the Barbarian, The Last of Us, or Blame! equally well in Apocalypse World. A cyberpunk game that can support Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell seems perfectly reasonable to me. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 16:07
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Serf posted:I have taken several cracks at Fragged Empire now and I find it to be just impenetrable. Burning Wheel was easier to understand for me. I found the quickstart to be readable in a way that the corebook originally wasn't.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:14
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Halloween Jack posted:I think they added trolls just because trolls are a real bitch to fight. The wild boars (gently caress, how do I remember this game so well?) are totally in line with all the "40% chance of 1d4 giant boars" stuff that I didn't include in my copypastes, but trolls not so much. You're probably right; I remember scrolling across the battlefield and having an oh-poo poo moment when I saw them. I always parked someone in a downed troll's grid squares so it couldn't get back up. Was impressed that the boars had that fight-while-dying mechanic too. And jeez. I can clearly remember exploring Sokol Keep, or fighting those kobolds, but I couldn't tell you if I had lunch last Friday or not.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:29
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Comrade Gorbash posted:To be honest I have far greater distaste for reductive definitions of cyberpunk than I do for cyberpunk works that aren't "punk" enough. Most of them are bad because they're written by hacks, and most of the sufficiently punk cyberpunk works are also bad for the same reason, not because they fail to check all the boxes on some list of tropes. This is an incredibly dumb paragraph and "nearly every supposedly cyberpunk game is D&D with cyborgs, none of them except Technoir emulate the interesting parts of cyberpunk" is in no way making a no true Scotsman argument about cyberpunk, hth. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 16:33
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On second thought, I know exactly why I remember Pool of Radiance so well: I have a very long iTunes playlist that is solely the product of playing Pool of Radiance on a NES emulator with the music off and the clock speed turned up, while I played a collection of music that seemed most appropriate for exploring a creepy dungeon. I've played through the whole thing several times. I know the PC version has more content, PoR is a great inspiration for a wide variety of "dungeon-like" environments. There's a monster-infested slum, a couple of abandoned factories, a library, an abandoned mansion overtaken by a thieves' guild... Comrade Gorbash posted:Yeah I should have mentioned that. It's a great reference in play, and all the info is there to learn but they clearly laid it out for the form rather than the latter. Also the explanation of resources and gear is by far the weakest piece of rules text in the book, though the system actually works quite well once you figure out what they're getting at.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:49
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Lemon-Lime posted:This is an incredibly dumb paragraph and "nearly every supposedly cyberpunk game is D&D with cyborgs, none of them except Technoir emulate the interesting parts of cyberpunk" is in no way making a no true Scotsman argument about cyberpunk, hth.
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Aug 31, 2017 16:58
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Comrade Gorbash posted:You don't see this same snobbish response to post-apocalyptic stories, for example - people don't say Mad Max or Turbo Kid "aren't really post-apocalyptic" because they aren't as grim as The Road. You could run Thundarr the Barbarian, The Last of Us, or Blame! equally well in Apocalypse World. A cyberpunk game that can support Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell seems perfectly reasonable to me. The general complaint about cyberpunk games is that they're focused on a D&D style setup with characters who have heavy firepower. As far as actual cyberpunk literature is concerned, that's maaayyybe suited for Neuromancer and Count Zero, and possibly Snow Crash, and nothing else that I can think of. I don't turn my nose up at Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, or for that matter Bubblegum Crisis and AD Police. But roleplaying games usually gently caress up when they try to accommodate both that and, say, When Gravity Fails, particularly in a non-narrative system. It's not a matter of purists wanting to ruin your fun. (As I went over, you don't need to look at Shadowrun haters to find people who are angry that you have fun playing Shadowrun. Plenty of ardent Shadowrun players are mad about other people playing Shadowrun wrong, having all sorts of disgusting illicit fun.) It's more analogous to how, say, Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes are real bad at having Batman and Captain America in the same game with Thor and Superman. You probably wouldn't like it if every prominent post-apocalypse game was focused on playing guys in power armor a la Fallout.
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Aug 31, 2017 17:18
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Comrade Gorbash posted:It's about the same I'd say, though I find the Fragged system to be a lot easier to work with. Though I edited the thing, Wade had a great intuition for organization, so he made my job much easier in that regard. 
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Aug 31, 2017 17:25
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Halloween Jack posted:For some people it's about snobbishness--for some people it always is, just look at how diehards grouse over anything Lovecraftian--but for most it's about facilitating play. Lemon-Lime posted:Not really. Neuromancer is about low-lives running a series of heists and backstabbing each other, not about a party of heavily-armed and -armoured killers treating corporate arcologies like D&D dungeons. Lemon-Lime posted:The good and worthwhile parts of cyberpunk aren't the parts about tooled-up cyber-assassins violently murdering people, they're the bits about two-bit drug addicts or struggling mothers getting involved in stuff that's five orders of magnitude larger than anything they could ever comprehend because they had to score or put food on the table this week. They're about desperate people trying to survive in a near-future dystopia, breaking the law and ending up in serious trouble because it was literally their only option to make ends meet.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:02
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Cyberpunk "purism" is important because of what it's defining itself against, namely fetishization of a system that's awful for most people. This thought is actually very applicable to post-apocalyptic fiction, it just usually isn't expressed in terms of genre.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:11
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Cyberpunk "purism" is important because of what it's defining itself against, namely fetishization of a system that's awful for most people. This thought is actually very applicable to post-apocalyptic fiction, it just usually isn't expressed in terms of genre. I'd definitely have some strong critiques of a cyberpunk work that went a "the corps are right actually" route or amounted to simply providing an excuse for technofetishistic power fantasies (though I think there's room for the latter - what else is Aeon Flux? - at least to be interesting in a very "handle with care" way). But there's this focus on who a cyberpunk story is about, the gross trappings and setting, rather than what it's about, and frankly I think the "cyberpunk is about two-bit hoods and people living in boxes" argument is just as guilty of glomming onto an aesthetic element as works that get distracted by all the shiny chrome. EDIT: To be really specific, the problem with Shadowrun as a cyberpunk work isn't that the PCs are scary badasses who run insane heists, nor is it even that the setting elides the thematic elements of alienation, marginalization, and invasive technological change, but that it never bridges the gap between the setting elements and what the players actually do. None of the TTRPG versions of Shadowrun (except maaaaybe Anarchy) provide any meaningful impetus or mechanical encouragement for PCs to grapple with those themes in anything but the most surface-y of ways. I do think Technoir is one of the better attempts at a cyberpunk game for explicitly focusing its mechanics on eliciting that interaction, but you could still achieve that same result if the PCs were members of a highly augmented PMC as opposed to just street hoods. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 18:37
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Halloween Jack posted:FE is better set up for reference than for learning, I'll tell you what. Yeah, holy poo poo, I was going to say wtf is everyone talking about?! I'm reading it now and there are about a million times when I have to jump around forwards and backwards to understand the rules, and so many times when they just dump a giant list of nonsense that they don't explain until later - sometimes much later. For reading straight through (which is how I like to read RPGs), it is terrible. But it is extremely well cross-referenced and every time I need to jump 20 pages forward and then 34 pages backwards, I've been able to figure out what is happening with ease. So it's like the anti-Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel is laid out to be read cover to cover and is super good for learning in that way, and is only ok if you want to reference a rule.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:46
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As a technical writer I can say that yes, reference is excellent and many games do it really badly or not at all, to their detriment; but no, making a reference manual is not sufficient on its own, you still need introduction, concepts, tutorials, and procedures to be documented in accessible ways, and organized collectively in a well-signposted navigable format. You have two separate use cases here: learning the game, and looking up rules while playing. The two use cases are best addressed using two different approaches, and it's very challenging to address both in the same book without compromising one or the other (or often, both). Comrade Gorbash posted:I'd definitely have some strong critiques of a cyberpunk work that went a "the corps are right actually" route or amounted to simply providing an excuse for technofetishistic power fantasies (though I think there's room for the latter - what else is Aeon Flux? - at least to be interesting in a very "handle with care" way). But there's this focus on who a cyberpunk story is about, the gross trappings and setting, rather than what it's about, and frankly I think the "cyberpunk is about two-bit hoods and people living in boxes" argument is just as guilty of glomming onto an aesthetic element as works that get distracted by all the shiny chrome. Max Headroom was an excellent cyberpunk work, even though the main characters were an AI, the reporter he was cloned from, and the reporter's immediate bosses and co-workers working for a megacorp. And not actually about Blank Reg, although there was a Blank Reg episode and character arc, sorta. The thing is, though, and I think this is also valid: cyberpunk doesn't have to be engaged-with on this level, necessarily. It can also just be, you know, cool. It's OK to elfgame around with your cybersword and hack the gibson. It's only a failing of Shadowrun if Shadowrun is supposed to be more than just a silly romp involving wizards and street samurai chopping up corporate drones and stealing trade secrets. As a literary genre, cyberpunk can be serious literature - or come close to it anyway - by taking its cultural/societal criticisms seriously. But it can also just be trashy fun fantasy fiction. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 18:57
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Leperflesh posted:As a technical writer I can say that yes, reference is excellent and many games do it really badly or not at all, to their detriment; but no, making a reference manual is not sufficient on its own, you still need introduction, concepts, tutorials, and procedures to be documented in accessible ways, and organized collectively in a well-signposted navigable format. Couldn't RPG's do this fairly easily, either by shipping a box set with two 'rulebooks' or having a front and rear section that are read separately?
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Aug 31, 2017 19:08
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They could do it. "Fairly easily" is another question: RPG customers seem to piss and moan about the price of materials to begin with. For my money: "learn to play" is a one-off guide you probably don't ever need to read a third time, so I would want that to be a cheap option like a PDF or an online tutorial. And reference is also done way better with hyperlinks and search, so that works better as a PDF or a web site. But as a book fetishist, nothing replaces having a hefty tome to pore through and look at the pictures and dog ear the pages. So neither of the above satisfies that itch. I guess that means my ideal RPG has all of the above, and that means it costs a lot to produce. If you use modern single-sourcing content management, you can do it for cheaper, but... yeah, those tools are complex and require a fair amount of expertise to set up and use, it's not the skillset your typical RPG writer will have, and hiring someone with those skills is very expensive.
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Aug 31, 2017 19:14
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I do in fact agree with this, and it's a shame that there aren't more cyberpunk games that do something else. What I'm responding to are statements like this:
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Aug 31, 2017 19:43
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A freebie 'learn to play' booklet got me to do a complete 180 on Changeling: the Lost. Stick 'em on the company website, send them out to stores in stacks, Bob's your uncle. 'Here's how this works, here's our themes, ask the counter jockey about the reference manual!'
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Aug 31, 2017 20:25
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Bieeardo posted:A freebie 'learn to play' booklet got me to do a complete 180 on Changeling: the Lost. Stick 'em on the company website, send them out to stores in stacks, Bob's your uncle. 'Here's how this works, here's our themes, ask the counter jockey about the reference manual!' I wonder if this would work for a PDF release. Do a free how to play guide and then put the actual rules and setting in a 5 or 10 dollar booklet.
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Aug 31, 2017 20:40
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That's how the new Runequest is doing it. They put out a pretty comprehensive quickstart online and for Free RPG day, and will be selling the full rules/setting books early next year.
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Aug 31, 2017 20:46
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Halloween Jack posted:What Lemon-Lime is describing isn't "reductive." Pretty much all of Gibson's novels, Stephenson's Snow Crash, Effinger's Marid series, and much of Sterling's work fit the bill. The Marid series, some of Gibson's novels, and Sterling's work do fit the small time/nobodies idea, but that's my point - the influential cyberpunk works being referenced here as ones to emulate have a pretty wide scope of protagonists and main characters. Some of them are bystanders swept up in events beyond their control, some of them are small time players who get pulled into big time problems, and some of them are big time players dealing with big time problems. EDIT: To go back to Hiro for a second - that he's not a nobody doesn't mean he isn't a marginalized, alienated loner exploited by the hosed up system around him. It's just that he's also a tooled up hacker/assassin with powerful friends who goes on an aquatic dungeon crawl with a portable railgun at the end of the novel. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 20:46
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Also Snow Crash is like 90% genre parody so it's probably a bad example for either side of the argument.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:31
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Lemon-Lime posted:Yes. Once it comes out (hopefully it ends up good! Scum & Villainy didn't quite work, IME) that'll bring the total number of good cyberpunk games to two. I think we have different visions of cyberpunk! To my mind, the law is just another hazard, same as corps - both can be modeled with AW's rules for gangs and hazards and threats. I don't see a functional law-and-order state as a part of cyberpunk so it's not something that would occur to me. Blades in the Dark covers Doing Crimes better than AW does. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 22:00
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Cease to Hope posted:I think we have different visions of cyberpunk! To my mind, the law is just another hazard, same as corps - both can be modeled with AW's rules for gangs and hazards and threats. I don't see a functional law-and-order state as a part of cyberpunk so it's not something that would occur to me. You don't need to make AW do that for you - someone already has. It's called The Sprawl, and it's excellent.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:17
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On reflection, I don't understand Lemon-Lime's issue with The Sprawl. The game's definitely got some CP2020/Shadowrunny cruft, but I don't think the problem is that the characters aren't weak or desperate enough.Comrade Gorbash posted:I really don't see it isn't precisely what I'm arguing against, and also Snow Crash and Neuromancer aren't about the kind of "nobodies" being held up as the real cyberpunk protagonists. Case and Hiro may start down and out, as basically two bit players, but both fell to that place after being hot poo poo hackers. Hiro in particular is really just slumming it - it takes all of like three days in the novel for him to hook back up with his rich and powerful friends and get tooled up with expensive toys and the ability to call in favors of effective world powers. The reason he lives in a storage shed is he's too proud to ask his friends for help and too much of an rear end in a top hat for regular employment. However, a game that includes both Rick Deckard and Major Kusanagi tends to result in Deckard dying in a blast of shrapnel. It's that "Batman and Superman in the same system" problem all over again, coupled with the lack of a larger sense of direction and purpose that afflicts many, many games. (I can't speak to CP2020, but in Shadowrun there's a particular problem of what happens to the other PCs when you balance combat encounters so as to challenge the most combat-ready characters.) (Now that I get to thinking about it, I believe this is part of the reason the traitorous Mr. Johnson is such an overused cliche! It's a way to create that "Oh poo poo, we're in over our heads" dynamic with a PC group made up of elite killers.) I have a sort-of innate distaste for fixing all design problems by converting to PbtA or FATE, but I definitely prefer The Sprawl to out-of-the-box CP2020 or Shadowrun. Among other things, it allows PCs like the Media and Rockerboy archetypes from CP2020 to contribute mechanically alongside the heavy hitters, without the GM having to contrive something for them to do. I don't think a good cyberpunk game has to be thoroughly narrative, but if you want a narrative that suits a classic cyberpunk novel, it does need to be built to facilitate the PCs being proactive and the GM easily responding to what they decide to do. In Shadowrun, your actions change the world if the GM runs you through an adventure where that's what the adventure says happens.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:27
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I think we're largely in agreement. Halloween Jack posted:I have a sort-of innate distaste for fixing all design problems by converting to PbtA or FATE, but I definitely prefer The Sprawl to out-of-the-box CP2020 or Shadowrun. Among other things, it allows PCs like the Media and Rockerboy archetypes from CP2020 to contribute mechanically alongside the heavy hitters, without the GM having to contrive something for them to do. I don't think a good cyberpunk game has to be thoroughly narrative, but if you want a narrative that suits a classic cyberpunk novel, it does need to be built to facilitate the PCs being proactive and the GM easily responding to what they decide to do. In Shadowrun, your actions change the world if the GM runs you through an adventure where that's what the adventure says happens.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:33
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Mr. Maltose posted:Also Snow Crash is like 90% genre parody so it's probably a bad example for either side of the argument. Sadly, everyone I've spoken to about it read the book straight and thought it was a sterling example of the genre. Same with David Eddings. I don't think any of them really understood the concept of satire or parody.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:42
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How anyone can read a book whose main character is literally named "Hiro Protagonist" and not realize it's a satire is utterly beyond me.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:44
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It might even be 95~98% parody if you assume the use of myth and human programming bits are Stephenson making fun of himself.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:48
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Halloween Jack posted:I have a sort-of innate distaste for fixing all design problems by converting to PbtA or FATE, but I definitely prefer The Sprawl to out-of-the-box CP2020 or Shadowrun. Among other things, it allows PCs like the Media and Rockerboy archetypes from CP2020 to contribute mechanically alongside the heavy hitters, without the GM having to contrive something for them to do. I don't think a good cyberpunk game has to be thoroughly narrative, but if you want a narrative that suits a classic cyberpunk novel, it does need to be built to facilitate the PCs being proactive and the GM easily responding to what they decide to do. In Shadowrun, your actions change the world if the GM runs you through an adventure where that's what the adventure says happens. I can understand that distaste - converting to either of those can feel like turning the dial completely the other way from Shadowrun/whatever kind of system you converted from, especially when there are some things that get lost in the translation. That being said, so far I like The Sprawl's reductionist approach to all of the cruft that's built up on the bloated mass of Shadowrun. Is it really important that there are 50 different types of pistol, all of which do the same thing with a stat or two tweaked in a different direction? Honestly, there is a game in Shadowrun but I feel like the rules are deliberately getting in the way of it.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:52
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FMguru posted:How anyone can read a book whose main character is literally named "Hiro Protagonist" and not realize it's a satire is utterly beyond me. Having read the substantial footnotes to Stephenson's books, I will say that if snow crash is a satire now, it wasn't to Stephenson when he was writing it
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Aug 31, 2017 22:54
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FMguru posted:How anyone can read a book whose main character is literally named "Hiro Protagonist" and not realize it's a satire is utterly beyond me. I swear, a crate of Buckaroo Banzai VHS tapes must have fallen on their heads when they were children.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:14
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LuiCypher posted:That being said, so far I like The Sprawl's reductionist approach to all of the cruft that's built up on the bloated mass of Shadowrun. Is it really important that there are 50 different types of pistol, all of which do the same thing with a stat or two tweaked in a different direction? Honestly, there is a game in Shadowrun but I feel like the rules are deliberately getting in the way of it.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:46
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Snow Crash is a bit odd in that Stephenson seems to have been poking fun at some of the cliches that had already arisen around cyberpunk, but I don't think it's quite parody and definitely not satire. Maybe the term for it is affectionate parody? It's a lot like Galaxy Quest, where it makes fun of the stuffy seriousness of the genre but is ultimately sympathetic to its core themes.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:10
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A well-made, loving pastiche? It's a parody that's so good and so appreciative that it's a sterling example of the genre it's lampooning.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:16
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Xarbala posted:A well-made, loving pastiche? I mean this is the best kind of parody. The thing about Snow Crash as well is that in some respects it was more prescient than the stories it was ostensibly parodying. I guess you could look at the Metaverse as an attempt to parody Gibson's take on cyberspace, instead of this fathomless digital galaxy of white-hot datapoints and killer programs you have a giant virtual chatroom slathered in ads, people with walking penis avatars, going through the motions of a virtual existence except it's all just pantomime...except one of these things actually happened.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:24
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Kai Tave posted:I mean this is the best kind of parody. The thing about Snow Crash as well is that in some respects it was more prescient than the stories it was ostensibly parodying. I guess you could look at the Metaverse as an attempt to parody Gibson's take on cyberspace, instead of this fathomless digital galaxy of white-hot datapoints and killer programs you have a giant virtual chatroom slathered in ads, people with walking penis avatars, going through the motions of a virtual existence except it's all just pantomime...except one of these things actually happened.  to give you a penis avatar, just to really hammer home your point.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:41
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I'm gonna save a few bucks and watch Anshe Chung's virtual sexual assault again. https://youtu.be/RedLyae4b2s
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Sep 1, 2017 02:01
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