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My favourite thing about the career compendium is the Rapscallion, the one that's literally just "Barry Lyndon." The illo even looks like Ryan O'Neal.
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Sep 14, 2017 22:37
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Oh! One important thing about WFRP2e is that the first published adventure - Ashes of Middenheim - gates the entire adventure behind a roll that nobody might succeed at.
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Sep 14, 2017 22:46
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I like how at no point does he actually mention a lie. Jesus loving christ.
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Sep 14, 2017 22:47
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dwarf74 posted:Oh! One important thing about WFRP2e is that the first published adventure - Ashes of Middenheim - gates the entire adventure behind a roll that nobody might succeed at. How does that even work?
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Sep 14, 2017 22:50
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Kwyndig posted:How does that even work? The entire paths of the damned campaign is really bad. Most of the others are solid.
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Sep 14, 2017 23:07
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Kwyndig posted:How does that even work? It's the sort of thing that makes you immediately appreciate GUMSHOE.
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Sep 14, 2017 23:08
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1e WHFRP has an example of how to play with skill checks. Our hero is trying to get onto a stagecoach - so the GM makes them make a 30% 'ride your horse' check, a 30% 'jump to the coach' check, and a 30% 'don't fall off the coach' check. Our hero succeeds, implying this is a sensible way of running this kind of scene, and ignoring there was like a 3% chance of our hero not getting trampled. (This is by memory, someone who picked up the bundle should post a screenshot)
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Sep 14, 2017 23:17
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Xiahou Dun posted:I like how at no point does he actually mention a lie. That screenshot doesn't show the entire post. The "lie" is that she (and the other store employees) claim that he harassed her (he did), and the entire post was to ask if he could sue the storeowner over being banned.
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Sep 14, 2017 23:46
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I hope that guy gets help before he murders her and her fiance
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Sep 15, 2017 00:33
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what in the everliving gently caress? I think my favorite (read: worst) part is where he says "I didn't stalk her, she lives close to the store and I've seen her walk home a few times." Someone swat this guy, fast.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:40
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dwarf74 posted:Clues, man. It starts as a murder investigation, and you gotta roll. to. find. every. clue. And a lot of those clues are at -10% for a starting WFRP character, so we're looking at 20%ish each time one comes up. If you're lucky. xiw posted:1e WHFRP has an example of how to play with skill checks. Our hero is trying to get onto a stagecoach - so the GM makes them make a 30% 'ride your horse' check, a 30% 'jump to the coach' check, and a 30% 'don't fall off the coach' check. Our hero succeeds, implying this is a sensible way of running this kind of scene, and ignoring there was like a 3% chance of our hero not getting trampled. (This is by memory, someone who picked up the bundle should post a screenshot) This is probably the single biggest flaw with the earlier versions of WFRP, it's not the system itself so much as the fact that whoever was in charge of writing examples of skill use and various adventures always managed to present it in the shittiest possible light through ridiculously penalized rolls to do even basic, simple things, let alone anything more complex. It doesn't have to work that way, they could have used more sensible TNs and more equitable modifiers but instead they insisted on this constant throughline of making everything as much of a chore as possible and that more than anything is where I think the game's reputation of being a shitfarmer death simulator comes from.
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Sep 15, 2017 01:28
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AlphaDog posted:Yeah, temporary victories with a cost is what I was getting at. As others have said, Delta Green is very, very good. I haven't had an opportunity to check out the newest version (although my understanding is that it maintains that level of quality), but Delta Green: Countdown is, in my opinion, the best-written RPG book I own and I have adapted and re-adapted material from it over and over, not just in CoC scenarios, but in tons of other systems and settings. It's really great.
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Sep 15, 2017 02:32
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Yeah, it definitely had that rep. I played in a pickup session at a demo day back in the day, and the thing I most remember is my character taking a head shot and getting brain damage, making him useless for his primary purpose as an archer.
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Sep 15, 2017 02:32
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fool_of_sound posted:The entire paths of the damned campaign is really bad. Most of the others are solid. FFG did this repeatedly in their campaigns/adventures for such along time until their dark heresy testers (or maybe even later?) told them they really need to not do this and why it constantly causes huge issues. They then did an adventure where you can continue until your party psyker just gets a vision on where to go to next. Theres also a decent chance you wont have a psyker.
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Sep 15, 2017 02:53
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Subjunctive posted:Is the new core rulebook out yet? The Agent's Handbook, which contains all the player-facing information and rules and mechanics, has been out for a while yet. The "Handler's Book", which includes the new DG timeline, details on The Opposition, and a lot of other GM-facing information, is still in production. It was large enough that they had to split it into two books.
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Sep 15, 2017 03:08
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I'm not very experienced with tabletop RPGs like DnD but I was kinda interested in trying one (other than DnD, which I sorta know and have done before). Shadowrun's my main interest (and I asked a bit about it in that thread), but I was curious what else was out there and what might be worth trying. e: Cyberpunk is the main interest, sci-fi being secondary. Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Sep 15, 2017 |
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Sep 15, 2017 04:37
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Halloween Jack posted:This is one of those cases where the worst advertisement for any movement is its adherents. I see this a lot on forums: fans focus on what makes a game unique and exaggerate it to the point that it turns a lot of people off. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Just like how Exalted wasn't "THE GAME WHERE YOU GO ON A MOUNTAIN AND KILL EVERYONE ON THE FLAT EARTH BEFORE loving THAT MOUNTAIN AND DRINKING A CUP OF HEROINE PISSED OUT OF A DINOSAUR," as my friend once put it. Man stalks women, gets banned from her place of work over it, and tries to sue the store. Reddit.com, everyone!
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Sep 15, 2017 04:50
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Cuntellectual posted:I was curious what else was out there and what might be worth trying. This is a risky thing to propose, because we know a huge number of weird RPGs that are worth trying. My go to 'freak the squares' choice when someone says "I really only know D&D" is: You should play Microscope a game about collaboratively creating a history of your choice. In the genre of Sci-fi, I might recommend: Lasers and Feelings. Yes, it is only one page long.
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Sep 15, 2017 05:34
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Cuntellectual posted:I'm not very experienced with tabletop RPGs like DnD but I was kinda interested in trying one (other than DnD, which I sorta know and have done before). At the risk of being unhelpful, this is an extremely broad question. There's a ton of stuff out there and this thread could spend weeks alternately telling you everybody's favorite games and arguing about why it would be a bad idea for you to try and pick up those games. There are a veritable shitload of RPGs out there, some of which are pretty close to D&D and some of which aren't even a bit like D&D except in the sense that they're tabletop RPGs. Okay, so you know about D&D and Shadowrun. There's the World of Darkness series of RPGs which maybe you've heard of in passing, which generally involve RPGs where you and your group play as different sorts of supernatural monsters doing whatever monsters do. The current iteration of the WoD is in a bit of a weird state which the World of Darkness thread could elaborate upon more, but none of that really matters to you since you can still easily find all the games worth seeking out regardless of that. Contemporary WoD games range from more basic concepts like "you play as vampires doing shadow politics and wrestling with your inner monster" or "you play monster hunters, go gently caress some vamps up" to weirder fare like "you were kidnapped by the fae, kept as a twisted plaything, but managed to escape and now have to piece your life back together" or "you were a biomechanical angel servant of the Machine-God only you fell from grace and now your life is a Cold War espionage thriller." One of the first RPGs I ever started out with is Feng Shui, which is now on its 2nd Edition. Feng Shui is a much lighter game mechanically than D&D or Shadowrun, and it's a game heavily inspired by Hong Kong action cinema, John Woo movies, Big Trouble in Little China, that sort of thing. The premise is an excuse to mash modern-day contract assassins and maverick cops together with kung-fu masters, chi sorcerers, time-traveling cyborgs, and a bunch of other Hollywood stock character types and have them blow up expensive setpieces in style. I recommend it as it has a personal place in my heart but also because it was the first game I really sat down, read, and gave me the conceptual framework for understanding How An RPG Works. Unknown Armies is a game about weird modern day magic-with-a-k and the weird obsessed people who pursue it. It's not a game about stylish mages throwing fireballs, it's a game about broken misfits chasing power that might very well cause them more harm than good, in a setting which is both steeped with strange occultism and entirely humanocentric...there are no otherworldly entities manipulating humanity, no Great Old Ones, there are no reptilian overlords, it's all just people doing things to other people. If you've ever read Last Call by Tim Powers, then you know what Unknown Armies is all about. Blades in the Dark is a game about playing a crew of criminals in a setting that's basically Thief: the Dark Project by way of Dishonored. You make a gang, you make its members, and you go on jobs to make scores, advance your rep and standing, and try to go out on top. The game is designed to minimize a lot of the prep and heist planning that can bog down similar games by simply throwing you into jobs and then allowing you to describe how you planned for this or that contingency as necessary. Characters get injured, get stressed, have to spend money and spare time patching themselves up and indulging in vices, and might very well wind up dying or burning out before they ever finish that One Last Job, but there's always someone else lean and hungry ready to take their place. Also ghosts are everywhere, the sun never rises, and the city is powered by blood harvested by massive sea-monsters. e; for cyberpunk specifically Blades in the Dark is going to get a cyberpunk alternate setting at some point, there's also Technoir, The Sprawl, Cyberpunk 2020 if you want to go for some older-school retro gaming (this is the game that the CDProjekt Red Cyberpunk game is based off of), Eclipse Phase is transhuman sci-fi with shared designer DNA from Shadowrun, Fragged Empire is literal posthuman sci-fi in that it takes place after humanity is quite literally extinct as a number of engineered races decide to try and create actual civilizations for themselves, I'm sure some others will come to me later. Like I said, there's a lot of stuff out there. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Sep 15, 2017 |
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Sep 15, 2017 05:40
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Worth mentioning in regard to humanity being "doomed" in the Mythos isn't even all that true, sure we'll probably go extinct some day, but going off Lovecraft's own writing(since he's done stories involving time travel), we've got at least a couple thousand years left, and that's just on Earth, and not counting any possible descendent species we might have either
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Sep 15, 2017 05:48
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Cuntellectual posted:I'm not very experienced with tabletop RPGs like DnD but I was kinda interested in trying one (other than DnD, which I sorta know and have done before). My go-to cyberpunk recommendations: The Sprawl and/or Technoir. You might find the Sprawl easier to adapt to if you're coming from D&D, but Technoir is probably the better game even if it requires rather more of an adjustment in approach.
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Sep 15, 2017 08:54
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This is the same guy from an r/relationships thing about a month ago. He's 17, she's in her 30s, and he thinks he's a better match than her boyfriend because R is a lowly adjunct professor while HE is a Computer Science Undergrad and therefore future millionaire. e: this post inadequately expresses my joyful schadenfreude at this update. Thank you Plutonis for this gift. Splicer fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Sep 15, 2017 |
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Sep 15, 2017 09:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Agent's Handbook, which contains all the player-facing information and rules and mechanics, has been out for a while yet. The "Handler's Book", which includes the new DG timeline, details on The Opposition, and a lot of other GM-facing information, is still in production. It was large enough that they had to split it into two books. Ah, OK. The pages talked about the core rulebook being a superset of the agent's handbook, but that makes sense.
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Sep 15, 2017 09:57
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drrockso20 posted:Worth mentioning in regard to humanity being "doomed" in the Mythos isn't even all that true, sure we'll probably go extinct some day, but going off Lovecraft's own writing(since he's done stories involving time travel), we've got at least a couple thousand years left, and that's just on Earth, and not counting any possible descendent species we might have either Even if you, the character in the story, somehow knew that, it'd be pretty hard to take comfort from it while you were caught up in the events of The Call Of Cthulhu, or even Pickman's Model.
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Sep 15, 2017 10:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Agent's Handbook, which contains all the player-facing information and rules and mechanics, has been out for a while yet. The "Handler's Book", which includes the new DG timeline, details on The Opposition, and a lot of other GM-facing information, is still in production. It was large enough that they had to split it into two books. I did a search for Delta Green on DTRPG and I have no idea what to buy for the current version. Is the Agent's Handbook the only thing that is released for it so far?
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Sep 15, 2017 11:13
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Drone posted:I did a search for Delta Green on DTRPG and I have no idea what to buy for the current version. Is the Agent's Handbook the only thing that is released for it so far? Delta Green - Need to Know: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/175760/Delta-Green-Need-to-Know This is the "free quickstart". It has all the gameplay rules you need to play, plus a set of pregens, plus a oneshot adventure Delta Green - Briefing Documents: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/184104/Delta-Green-Briefing-Documents This is like an even shorter set of gameplay rules that you can distribute to your players along with a character sheet as a hand-out. Delta Green - Agent's Handbook: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/181674/Delta-Green-Agents-Handbook This is the "player's handbook". It has all the gameplay rules, character creation rules, and some player-facing lore and background and fluff. There are a number of pre-written scenarios made specifically for this version of the game: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/201036/Delta-Green-Future-Perfect-Part-1 http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218944/Delta-Green-Reverberations http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/200599/Delta-Green-Observer-Effect http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/189186/Delta-Green-The-Star-Chamber http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/184098/Delta-Green-Lover-in-the-Ice http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/181675/Delta-Green-Kali-Ghati Future Perfect is pay-what-you-want. All of them except Lover in the Ice come with pregens (and thus can be played with just the Need to Know book as a rules reference), but Future Perfect, Reverberations and Observer Effect are more well-suited for first-time players/first agent missions in a longer "campaign".
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Sep 15, 2017 11:42
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Splicer posted:This is the same guy from an r/relationships thing about a month ago. He's 17, she's in her 30s, and he thinks he's a better match than her boyfriend because R is a lowly adjunct professor while HE is a Computer Science Undergrad and therefore future millionaire.
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Sep 15, 2017 14:45
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I am not looking forward to the inevitable murder-suicide.
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Sep 15, 2017 15:19
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Thus Unto Roasties
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Sep 15, 2017 15:22
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dwarf74 posted:Clues, man. It starts as a murder investigation, and you gotta roll. to. find. every. clue. And a lot of those clues are at -10% for a starting WFRP character, so we're looking at 20%ish each time one comes up. If you're lucky. Zoro posted:Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Just like how Exalted wasn't "THE GAME WHERE YOU GO ON A MOUNTAIN AND KILL EVERYONE ON THE FLAT EARTH BEFORE loving THAT MOUNTAIN AND DRINKING A CUP OF HEROINE PISSED OUT OF A DINOSAUR," as my friend once put it. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Sep 15, 2017 |
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Sep 15, 2017 15:42
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Every CoC character has (going back to first edition) a series of traits that the GM can user to unstick a stopped scenario: the Idea, Know, and Luck rolls. Every character has ratings in these skills, and they run from 45%-85% for most PCs. So when a scenario grinds to a halt, the GM can just tell everyone to make an Idea or Knowledge or Luck roll and if someone succeeds (someone will almost always succeed) they get the hint or clue or dumb coincidence they need to continue the scenario. It's not very elegant, and not very well explained, but it's there, and has been since 1981. I was deeply underwhelmed with Trail of Cthulhu (and Gumshoe in general) when it came out because it was solving a problem that had already been solved 25 years earlier.
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Sep 15, 2017 15:53
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FMguru posted:Every CoC character has (going back to first edition) a series of traits that the GM can user to unstick a stopped scenario: the Idea, Know, and Luck rolls. Every character has ratings in these skills, and they run from 45%-85% for most PCs. So when a scenario grinds to a halt, the GM can just tell everyone to make an Idea or Knowledge or Luck roll and if someone succeeds (someone will almost always succeed) they get the hint or clue or dumb coincidence they need to continue the scenario. It's not very elegant, and not very well explained, but it's there, and has been since 1981. I think if you say "someone will almost always succeed" and "It's not very elegant, and not very well explained" it's hard to also claim "it was solving a problem that had already been solved 25 years earlier". At best it had been partially mitigated in a slightly awkward fashion 25 years earlier.
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Sep 15, 2017 16:36
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drrockso20 posted:Worth mentioning in regard to humanity being "doomed" in the Mythos isn't even all that true, sure we'll probably go extinct some day, but going off Lovecraft's own writing(since he's done stories involving time travel), we've got at least a couple thousand years left, and that's just on Earth, and not counting any possible descendent species we might have either In Shadow Out of Time they state that humanity has been completely destroyed and giant beetle men now rule the world.They don't state how or when it goes down but humanity is destroyed at some point. Humanity's destruction is well within Lovecraft's cynical, materialist world view but its survival is not. He's also writing interwar horror stories, which do not have the optimism of the 50's or 60's in terms of humanity's destiny. Lovecraft wasn't big on humanity positively evolving too, he mostly focused on devolution through miscegenation. Even when humanity wins in his stories, there seems to be a sense that it's only for now and it's just delaying the inevitable. You can honestly do whatever you want, I usually just go with the vague ideas and concepts of Lovecraft's writing without all the baggage because it's for the better.
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Sep 15, 2017 16:38
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FMguru posted:Every CoC character has (going back to first edition) a series of traits that the GM can user to unstick a stopped scenario: the Idea, Know, and Luck rolls. Every character has ratings in these skills, and they run from 45%-85% for most PCs. So when a scenario grinds to a halt, the GM can just tell everyone to make an Idea or Knowledge or Luck roll and if someone succeeds (someone will almost always succeed) they get the hint or clue or dumb coincidence they need to continue the scenario. It's not very elegant, and not very well explained, but it's there, and has been since 1981. I think the big 'sea change' for Trail with regards to that is - why even roll at all? If the players need a clue or something to continue the adventure, why introduce the possibility for failure when you can just design the system to make sure they get at least something and, if they're willing to spend the proper resource, get more without needing to resort to dice? It's a common sense change to be certain, and I think the point they brought up is that good CoC GMs were already making these kinds of common sense changes. I think their schtick for Trail was - why not build it into the system and why not simplify the system at the same time? The new Delta Green, although based on CoC 6th, does build similar common sense changes into the old CoC system by adding skill 'thresholds' the allow people to automatically gather clues depending on how skilled they are in that field (someone with 80% Forensics is going to be able to pick up a lot more clues than someone with 30% Forensics, after all). That doesn't mean DG scenarios are always written to be bulletproof, though - I playtested one scenario where I didn't have a full complement of players, but two of the pre-generated characters I made had the one major clue-gathering skills (Biology) for that scenario. None of them picked either of those characters, and as a result I had a really rough time trying to feed them the proper clues.
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Sep 15, 2017 16:40
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I think "an expert in forensics always spots the forensically-relevant drop of blood in the crime scene" is a more elegant solution than "in the event that the forensics expert fails their Spot check, the party can roll INTx5 to see if anyone is eligible to be told by the GM that it occurred to them to check in this specific spot for blood spatter" Like, credit to all the old CoC players for making it work for them, but someone coming into CoC right now isn't necessarily going to get it, especially if it's not conveyed well, so GUMSHOE being a written solution and reference still has value. FWIW, Delta Green takes an approach where if your skill is high enough, like in the 50 to 60% range, you're supposed to score clues automatically. And you're also supposed to score clues without rolling, at the cost of time passing. And you're also supposed to score clues without rolling just 'cause, if it's the investigative phase of the game and there's no stress involved and it doesn't matter. ... because even if you can figure it out, that doesn't mean you can stop it. And figuring it out means jumping headlong into SAN-losing poo poo anyway.
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Sep 15, 2017 16:45
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Zoro posted:Man stalks women, gets banned from her place of work over it, and tries to sue the store. even funnier is that he's just a kid, like 17 or something and the chick at the store is 31. lol
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Sep 15, 2017 18:43
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Doorknob Slobber posted:even funnier is that he's just a kid, like 17 or something and the chick at the store is 31. lol
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Sep 15, 2017 19:44
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And of course if she wants to stay with her fiance, that means she's clearly not fit to make decisions for herself, and she needs this guy to figure her life out for her.
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Sep 15, 2017 20:02
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I think it's telling he refers to a woman 15 years his senior as a "girl."
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Sep 15, 2017 20:03
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Sometimes, I worry that I was as dumb as gamergators and their ilk in my youth. Then, I see this, and realize "lolnope, these fuckers are extra special kind of stupid, repulsive and mysonginstic." Nothing new, of course, but at least I was never that bad.
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Sep 15, 2017 20:06
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