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Bedlamdan posted:There are no jokes on these forums. 
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Nov 10, 2017 05:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:
I'd add in Retro Phaze as a very good "retroclone" based somewhat on early nes and snes jrpgs also it's free
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Nov 10, 2017 06:40
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Terrible Opinions posted:So what are the best/most interesting retroclones anyways? I've been wanting to give some a whirl but there are a huge number to choose from. Here's my thoughts based on the ones I own in print; Swords & Wizardry Complete Edition: basically a very cleaned up version of OD&D including all the supplements, it recently got a new edition that features art exclusively from women artists Dark Dungeons: pretty much the Rules Cyclopedia with some minor tweaks and additions Adventurer Conqueror King System: a BX clone with a heavy focus on domain management, it's one of my personal favorites(for among other things how it handles Racial Classes, the class creation system it introduces in it's first supplement, and for having the best implementation of the Cleave concept I've ever seen), but one of the people involved has some connections with The Escapist, so there might be some minor morality issues involved in buying it(although it has been in Bundle of Holding offers in the past, so that's one way to legally obtain it without directly supporting them) Basic Fantasy Role-Playing: basically a mashup of the D20 OGL with BX, its a decent game on it's own merits, but it's biggest plusses are that it's available for dirt cheap(core book is like 5 bucks on Amazon), and it has a ton of supplement support Microlite 74: a very light clone inspired by OD&D, has some really nice supplement support(this one isn't officially available in print, I printed up my own copy) Blood & Treasure Complete: D20 OGL converted to fit OSR concepts Dungeon Crawl Classics: others have covered this one well, I'll just mention that on top of it's merits as a game it's probably one of the most gorgeous books currently in print Delving Deeper: clone of the original 3 book version of OD&D, nothing fancy but it's a cheap and useful little book, and while there isn't much art in the book what there is is pretty good(and the cover is one of my favorite pieces of OSR art) Stars Without Number: an OSR game meant for Science Fiction settings, personally I don't like it at all and it's pretty much the one OSR product I regret buying in print Fantastic Heroes & Witchery: a very interesting book, as it is crammed with a ton of content, including a bunch of unique classes(and reinterpretations of classic classes), the best take on Firearms in an OSR game I've seen, and 666 spells, only real issue it has is that it doesn't have a monster section, even if you don't run it by itself there's a ton of stuff you can steal for use in other games Whitehack: probably the lightest game in the OSR, and one of the only rules light games I've read that didn't confuse and/or bore me, it manages to include a full and imaginative rules system and two adventures in just 64 pages(it even includes a way to get random numbers without dice, so it's probably one of the most prison friendly RPG systems ever made), it's also a book that is both extremely cheap in print and looks really good in a minimalist way, the only downside it has is that it has no official PDF version cause the author is a luddite weirdo The Nightmares Underneath: this one has already been discussed a lot, but I'll reiterate that it is a really good game, about the only issues it has are a relatively weak monster and spells selection(but that's one of the nice things about the OSR, it's easy to crib stuff from other games as needed) Pars Fortuna: a BX clone that might be one of the most unique OSR games out there, as the creator ditched much of the standard fantasy stuff and populated the classes, monsters, and spells with concepts he created using online random generators And some non rules books I own in print; Deep Carbon Observatory: an adventure that goes in some very unique directions Fire On The Velvet Horizon: a bestiary full of odd and unique monsters all illustrated in a very interesting way, is rule free so could be used with other systems as well Yoon-Suin- The Purple Land: a weird fantasy setting inspired by southern Asia, full of very useful and inspirational tables Weird Adventures: D&D Fantasy except set in the 1930's instead of medieval or renaissance times, goes into great detail about the setting's New York City equivalent, is a good looking book
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Nov 10, 2017 10:45
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I'm trying to think of a D&D-ish system I could swear I read 8-12 years ago but I can't think of exactly what it is. A lot of poo poo from around that time is kinda hazy in my mind because I was very unwell. The thing that stick out in my memory is that skills (and attacks? and spells?) worked "like saving throws", in that the default result of a check was "you succeed / are ok / pass / hit" and you would only roll to see if you overcame any obstacles or barriers. If there were no obstacles or barriers, you didn't roll, you just succeeded. It used a d20 for this, but also used other dice. Each skill had a list of what "an obstacle/barrier/whatever" might be, so you'd know that unless those things applied, the fact that you had trained, say, "climbing" meant you could automatically climb. I'm pretty sure the text made a really big deal out of this. I know that's vague as hell, but can anyone help me out with an idea about what I'm thinking of? It's entirely possible that I'm conflating two or three different things or that I dreamed the whole thing up.
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Nov 10, 2017 11:42
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drrockso20 posted:Stars Without Number: an OSR game meant for Science Fiction settings, personally I don't like it at all and it's pretty much the one OSR product I regret buying in print If you don't mind saying, what did you dislike about this one? I am looking for a sci fi system that I may want to introduce a mainly 5e group, the hope being that keeping it to a d20 system would smoother than say, system like Traveller.
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Nov 10, 2017 12:30
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So I finally picked up darkest dungeon and it's like someone read everything in my x-com rant and specifically made a game to soothe me.
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Nov 10, 2017 12:51
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drrockso20 posted:Adventurer Conqueror King System: a BX clone with a heavy focus on domain management, it's one of my personal favorites(for among other things how it handles Racial Classes, the class creation system it introduces in it's first supplement, and for having the best implementation of the Cleave concept I've ever seen), but one of the people involved has some connections with The Escapist, so there might be some minor morality issues involved in buying it(although it has been in Bundle of Holding offers in the past, so that's one way to legally obtain it without directly supporting them) Alexander Macris is a gamergater that's currently CEO of Milo Yiannopoulos' company, which are both way worse than the time he used his position at a gaming magazine to promote his OSR game.
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Nov 10, 2017 13:18
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if you're ever curious as to why you shouldn't support alexander macris take a little trip down to his twitter page
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Nov 10, 2017 13:26
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Nuns with Guns posted:Alexander Macris is a gamergater... ...he used his position at a gaming magazine to promote his OSR game.
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Nov 10, 2017 13:42
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I want to second WhiteHack which I think doesn't get the love it deserves because of the no PDF thing, I know that is why I avoided it for awhile. It's much more loosely based on D&D then most of the other systems but it's quick to convert monsters and adventures still. There are three classes Wise, Deft, and Strong but they are all flexible enough for you to make pretty much any classic D&D concept or even something more out there. It has some neat little subsystems built in and as mentioned is very short. There is almost always a coupon code on lulu so you can pick it up fairly cheaply.
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Nov 10, 2017 14:52
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Nuns with Guns posted:Alexander Macris ... used his position at a gaming magazine to promote his OSR game. It's about ethics in game journalism.
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Nov 10, 2017 15:44
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Everyone involved on culture war crap is in it to sell their poo poo.
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Nov 10, 2017 15:56
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Yep, that's why Milo and McInnes wouldn't go so far as to endorse Spencer
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Nov 10, 2017 15:59
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AlphaDog posted:I'm trying to think of a D&D-ish system I could swear I read 8-12 years ago but I can't think of exactly what it is. A lot of poo poo from around that time is kinda hazy in my mind because I was very unwell. Isn't this Dungeon World? I've not played any PbtA games but my understanding is that this is their central mechanic.
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Nov 10, 2017 17:20
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Sounds more like Shadow of the Demon Lord (you don't have skills like climbing in Dungeon World, you just Defy Danger or whatever) but that game's a lot newer than a decade old. It has the thing where skills and backgrounds mean you don't roll though. You might be mentally combining a couple games?
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Nov 10, 2017 18:56
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 For your weekend reading pleasure, a new blogpost for The Next Project is up.Topic of discussion is Roles: progress is being made to streamline some of the subtype options, including ironing out roles for the 6 classes that use them, making it into a unified framework. I'm planning to do my usual 3 posts this month, and then one in December, before taking a break for about a month. My hope is that during that time, I can push out the next draft of the rules, incorporating all the projected changes that are being outlined in the blog. If you're interested in joining the TNP discussion, join the Discord here! 
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Nov 10, 2017 19:50
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Pope Guilty posted:This was literally a joke John Tynes and Greg Costikyan were making like twenty years ago to get people to rethink dungeon crawling as a core RPG activity, christ. On a scale of 1 to Costikyan, that’s an extremely Cositkyan joke. Terrible Opinions posted:So what are the best/most interesting retroclones anyways? I've been wanting to give some a whirl but there are a huge number to choose from. My go to for one shots is Into the Odd. Character creation takes two minutes, classless roll under stat system, and no rolls to hit. I also like the Enlightenment mindset vs Surrealist reality setting conceit.
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Nov 10, 2017 20:15
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Nov 11, 2017 15:50
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they're... getting more and more abstract...? Yeah that's the first internet thing where I'm familiar with all the elements and still don't understand it at all.
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Nov 11, 2017 18:06
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loss.jpg edits are just getting weirder and weirder
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Nov 11, 2017 19:10
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At least try to google!!!! http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/millimeters-of-bone
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Nov 11, 2017 19:15
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Plutonis posted:At least try to google!!!! http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/millimeters-of-bone I googled "just a few millimetres of mud", but didn't get anything relevant. Per your article, though, quote:The post (shown below) received more than 20 retweets and 40 likes in 14 months. so it wasn't exactly taking over the world's consciousness.
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Nov 11, 2017 22:01
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Kai Tave posted:Red Tide is a game specifically designed to be played with one player and one GM Slight correction here, Red Tide is a setting book and also a guide to making your own sandbox setting. As already mentioned, Scarlet Heroes, which is nominally set in the Red Tide setting, is the system for playing one-on-one games. Terrible Opinions posted:So what are the best/most interesting retroclones anyways? I've been wanting to give some a whirl but there are a huge number to choose from. I can recommend Godbound because it's a fun comparative project in Kickstarter handling vs the actual Ex3 product. Godbound is, as mentioned, OSR Exalted But Not poo poo / Actually Good. It's also free to download. The nice thing is that the powers system it uses is theoretically portable over other light systems you like without too much conversion necessary (just the equivalent of damage dice, and whatever the equivalent of 'the best armor value' is) so while in the book it's layered on top of a basic DnDish system you can apply it onto what you want. Crawford also outright states that there's no way any demigod is going to stick to whatever plot you have as a GM, and so it has plenty of advice and tables and suggestions for playing a sandbox game and coming up with quick plots on the fly. The free version includes everything you need for the game. The Deluxe version mostly includes the stuff that's 'Exalted-ish' in case you're doing a full or tonal conversion - Godwalkers (mecha), Strifes (martial arts), and 'Themed Godbound' (aka different types of Exalted).
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Nov 11, 2017 22:52
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Honestly having run Godbound I'm mystified as to why goons seem to thing it's good at all, much less why they say it's '3xalted but not poo poo'. OSR style d20 is a terrible system for the style of game, the powers are badly balanced against on another, the combat is utterly uninteresting. The best thing it has going for it is the factions/minions system. Outside of the general subject, it's an entirely different experience from 3xalted, and honestly isn't a particularly good or interesting one. It's at that very uneasy level of crunchiness where it's too rules heavy to be particularly freeform, but too rules light to do anything interesting. It's more evidence for my theory of 'goon GMs love low prep systems regardless of actual quality because they're lazy', which is also why so many pbps die in the first couple pages.
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Nov 11, 2017 23:01
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I would never want to play Godbound and I'm mystified that anybody else would, but it does have a well-written setting and Kevin Crawford pretty much wrote the book on "selling RPGs like a real professional."
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Nov 11, 2017 23:11
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Yeah the fluff is all pretty good for sure
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Nov 11, 2017 23:21
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The rules are less of a mess than most of the other 'demigod games' like current Scion and Exalted. It's tonally different from Exalted, but it delivers on the same 'elevator pitch' idea that grabs people - "Fantasy demigods in a falling-apart world that needs saving". I GMed a couple sessions and I didn't notice powers being too imbalance to cause issues. Like yeah obviously "curse someone's bloodline" in Fertility isn't gonna be as globally applicable as "call lighting down on people" in Storm but there's no inherent restrictions on what people take, and generally speaking the advice the game gives for making powerful NPCs is one that can be given to players too - have at least one power you can use offensively that seems good, one that can be used defensively (by default, one of the automatic AC3 powers, but if they like wearing heavy armor or have a better idea, go nuts) and one generally applicable "cool" power.
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Nov 12, 2017 00:10
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fool_of_sound posted:Honestly having run Godbound I'm mystified as to why goons seem to thing it's good at all, much less why they say it's '3xalted but not poo poo'. OSR style d20 is a terrible system for the style of game, the powers are badly balanced against on another, the combat is utterly uninteresting. The best thing it has going for it is the factions/minions system. Outside of the general subject, it's an entirely different experience from 3xalted, and honestly isn't a particularly good or interesting one. It's at that very uneasy level of crunchiness where it's too rules heavy to be particularly freeform, but too rules light to do anything interesting. As I said before, for me its biggest issue is that it tends to repeat the problems that Exalted 2E had. Combat against equivalent enemies tends to devolve into a question of whose Effort is ground down first. It keeps the idea that you can spend resources on attacks that always hit, but you can also spend resources to block any attack, including those that auto-hit. It's a simple idea on paper but in practice it means that a lot of combat rounds nothing happens except for one side declaring they attack and the other side declaring they block, with the winners being the ones who can keep on defending and retain the most Effort. Like, here's a sample combat I saw on rpg.net and copy-pasted here: quote:
Ereshkigal goes down almost immediately because she didn't take the right Gifts, and I could summarize the entire fight as Mammon vs. Ares and his two wacky sidekicks. And I mean, yes, people could argue that this was a white-room scenario but that was also the excuse people kept on giving for Exalted 2E. 
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Nov 12, 2017 00:19
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Bedlamdan posted:Ereshkigal goes down almost immediately because she didn't take the right Gifts, and I could summarize the entire fight as Mammon vs. Ares and his two wacky sidekicks. It's also a fight between three max-level Godbound and one max-level 'appropriate' enemy where only one of the Godbound is as built for battle as the enemy. It's not a great scenario but it's also, even not in a white-room, not a common scenario unless you're starting a campaign at that high a level against that high a threat.
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Nov 12, 2017 00:23
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bewilderment posted:It's also a fight between three max-level Godbound and one max-level 'appropriate' enemy where only one of the Godbound is as built for battle as the enemy. It's not a great scenario but it's also, even not in a white-room, not a common scenario unless you're starting a campaign at that high a level against that high a threat. I understand that, but looking at the rules themselves, there doesn't seem any reason not to take a Word like Endurance and a Gift that fiats away mental attacks, and then tank away any conceivable threat to your person as long as Effort is retained. Which is a problem that homebrewers spent forever grappling with re: Exalted.
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Nov 12, 2017 00:29
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Bedlamdan posted:I understand that, but looking at the rules themselves, there doesn't seem any reason not to take a Word like Endurance and a Gift that fiats away mental attacks, and then tank away any conceivable threat to your person as long as Effort is retained. Which is a problem that homebrewers spent forever grappling with re: Exalted. As you level up in the game, maybe. But starting out... a guy I had was playing a 'Pirate Merchant Prince' sort of guy and he was just more interested in having the Word of Wealth and taking the Sustain the Multitude gift so that he was welcomed wherever he went to be a travelling 'wealth party'. And then he also took the Sea word with Body Of Water as a defence and, completing the ocean bit, the Sky word to call winds and lightning. Basically what I'm getting at is: Godbound isn't any better balanced than Exalted, despite its lower crunch. However, it makes the Good poo poo more obvious, and easier to weigh the costs and negatives up against "I want to be the owner of the party boat". You can take the Endurance word if you want to be Mr Invincible, but when you want a cult to worship you it's also nice to be able to stroll into town with the Health word and go "Yo, Ender of Plagues here, I can cure the sick." Which is actually what happened when I first ran it - as a test run I literally ran a converted version of the absolutely lovely 3.5e 1st-level adventure 'The Burning Plague'. Party rolled into town, saw the plague, and one guy said "Hey can I just... cure this as a Miracle of Health?" "I suppose you can! You can tell the people will get re-infected over time, though - seems like something underground is contaminating their water."
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Nov 12, 2017 05:12
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bewilderment posted:As you level up in the game, maybe. Jordan Procosh, did you change your username? Because that is literally what SA user Jordan Procoshk played in my Godbound game.
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Nov 12, 2017 05:15
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I think Godbound gets a lot more good press because of its comparison as an Exalted alternative.
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Nov 12, 2017 05:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think Godbound gets a lot more good press because of its comparison as an Exalted alternative. Yep! Godbound is not balanced. It likes to use high concepts and doesn't always translate those concepts to mechanics. But it is better then Exalted in just about every way! And the byline for Exalted has always been "So, what's an actually good system to run this setting/idea in?"
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Nov 12, 2017 05:36
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I feel like the only system I can think of off the top of my head that'd work well for Exalted-style stuff is Fate, because you need something with a flexibility that allows you to be the Incarnate of Whatever and do things that make sense for being the Incarnate of Whatever, but without the need to sit down and stat up every individual power. You need something loose but with a mechanical backbone you can hang things off of.
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Nov 12, 2017 05:55
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yep! It's funny that Bruce Cordell's Cypher-based Gods of the Fall basically made zero splash in this subgenre.
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Nov 12, 2017 06:03
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Evil Mastermind posted:I feel like the only system I can think of off the top of my head that'd work well for Exalted-style stuff is Fate, because you need something with a flexibility that allows you to be the Incarnate of Whatever and do things that make sense for being the Incarnate of Whatever, but without the need to sit down and stat up every individual power. You need something loose but with a mechanical backbone you can hang things off of. Nobilis is the game about doing this. On the flipside, Nobilis 2e (and 1e, which it expanded on) was not attainable legally for a good while, and Nobilis 3e has better rules but is much uglier visually and is missing things like an example of play or sample characters. Better rules, much worse book. It also might be too high-powered for what people want. gradenko_2000 posted:It's funny that Bruce Cordell's Cypher-based Gods of the Fall basically made zero splash in this subgenre. Cypher system itself is not looked upon fondly everywhere, and also, Gods of the Fall ain't free like Godbound is. If Godbound was just another $20 PDF being sold it wouldn't get as much talk. And the fact that it's free and yet has decent art and is laid out well is a bonus.
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Nov 12, 2017 06:08
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's funny that Bruce Cordell's Cypher-based Gods of the Fall basically made zero splash in this subgenre. The Cypher engine is Bad.
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Nov 12, 2017 06:26
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bewilderment posted:Godbound isn't any better balanced than Exalted, despite its lower crunch. However, it makes the Good poo poo more obvious, and easier to weigh the costs and negatives up against "I want to be the owner of the party boat". I'll admit that Godbound is at least less extreme with its flaws compared Exalted 2E. At the very least, it doesn't take as much time to grind down Effort as it does with a person's Motes. That's still an extremely low bar to clear, and can still create situations where for multiple turns of combat, nothing of substance might actually happen. Exalted 3E took a different approach, funnily enough by scaling things back. You can't fiat away an attack, and perfect effects aren't really perfect. If you want to dodge an attack without fail, you can, but if you want to use that ability again you still have to dodge a few other attacks fair and square. If you want to parry away a blow without worrying if it hits you, you can, but you're also diminishing your Initiative which means you won't be able to hit as hard, or pull off as many tricks, and you'll be more vulnerable to future attacks. 3E is a higher crunch game than Godbound, no question, but I think it's better balanced than either game or at least doesn't retain the issues that frustrate me. For any of those three games, it's fun to trample over an obstacle trivially as part of a power fantasy, no question. The issues arise when you want to introduce something on par, or even beyond a single player as an obstacle or an antagonist that you get problems, and if nothing else I think Exalted 3E anticipated and addressed those problems better. If I wanted to get into a fight with a rival Godbound, I don't want it to be resolved by either slow attrition or by spamming against whatever might have been deficient in their defenses. It's not really dramatic, it's just too binary. From what I've seen of the fights in the game you'll either blow an encounter away without ever needing to roll for it in the first place, or you're in for a bad time with not that much room for anything in between. If I were playing as Ereshkigal or Thor in that combat example earlier, I'd be walking away pretty unhappy. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 06:56
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I thought Exalted accidentally recreated the situation in fights where evenly matched people would grind on each other until someone gets a key edge and IT'S OVER, KAKAROTT! The problem is that all this fiddling bullshit meant that there was no fast pace, while if the combat was basically rolling craps at each other and taking chips out of a pile, it would have gone much faster.
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Nov 12, 2017 10:12
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