Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Vulpes Vulpes
Apr 28, 2013

"...for you, it is all over...!"

Halloween Jack posted:

A long while back, someone was asking where the Bopper fits into the kinds of stories the game is meant to tell--it actually fits snugly into a specific sub-subgenre of action movies from the tail end of the 70s and the early 80s, overlapping The Warriors, Escape from New York, and Mad Max.

You might be remembering me- I had a question along those lines, though my question wasn't the flavour or tone for the Bopper but rather how it worked in play. Spirit of 77 seems more oriented towards groups of PCs working together to solve mysteries and have adventures, and when your character's special ability is that you have a dozen guys that hang out with you, it puts you on a different footing. For instance, I played a bopper in a playtest on these forums where all the PCs got into a scuffle with robots at the state fair. At some point down the line, everyone else decided to steal Evel Knievel's limo and escape. That's a cool, fun way to get out of a scene, but unless my character was willing to leave their gang (the thing that makes them special and useful) behind, they had to find their own way out, which, being a scooter gang, was fine but kind of leaves them out of the club. The Bopper is a cool playbook, but I'm just kind of curious as to the experience of others in using it- in every other game of So77 I've played in or GM'd, no one has used it.

That said, I love So77 and wish I could play it more frequently.

edit: Hey, there's a new Double Feature on Drivethru!

Vulpes Vulpes fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Jan 2, 2018

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.
Doesn't the DJ in The Warriors refer to gang members as Boppers at one point?

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
Indeed. That said, Idunno if people who want to play Swan actually want to play a gang leader and deal with all that Chopper poo poo. After all, Cleon's probably a nightstick shoved halfway up his rear end right now.

Ewen Cluney
May 8, 2012

Ask me about
Japanese elfgames!

Covok posted:

Hate to be that guy, but are you going to kick start that Dragon World game?

Also, this looks loving cool.
Yeah, the plan is to do the Kickstarter for the first Japanese Golden Sky Stories supplement (Mononoke Koyake, or "Twilight Tales" as we're calling it) and then move on to Dragon World. Aside from eating less garbage and exercising more, one of my major goals for 2018 is to get those two Kickstarters out the door.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Vulpes Vulpes posted:

You might be remembering me- I had a question along those lines, though my question wasn't the flavour or tone for the Bopper but rather how it worked in play. Spirit of 77 seems more oriented towards groups of PCs working together to solve mysteries and have adventures, and when your character's special ability is that you have a dozen guys that hang out with you, it puts you on a different footing. For instance, I played a bopper in a playtest on these forums where all the PCs got into a scuffle with robots at the state fair. At some point down the line, everyone else decided to steal Evel Knievel's limo and escape. That's a cool, fun way to get out of a scene, but unless my character was willing to leave their gang (the thing that makes them special and useful) behind, they had to find their own way out, which, being a scooter gang, was fine but kind of leaves them out of the club. The Bopper is a cool playbook, but I'm just kind of curious as to the experience of others in using it- in every other game of So77 I've played in or GM'd, no one has used it.

That said, I love So77 and wish I could play it more frequently.

edit: Hey, there's a new Double Feature on Drivethru!

"Grounded" is a hell of a disadvantage. But if you grab a limo, likely they'll steal a vehicle too!

Also, I don’t know if you know, but this exact adventure is used as an example of the DJ Playing to find out what happens in the core book.


My character of C. Rebel Deveraux, when I was playing her as a Bopper, had a tour bus she used to transport the Salthill Casuals. And sometimes they sat on the curb or set up a perimeter.

Vulpes Vulpes
Apr 28, 2013

"...for you, it is all over...!"
Yeah, the Bopper mentioned in that excerpt was my character, Reggie.

OfChristandMen
Feb 14, 2006

GENERIC CANDY AVATAR #2
Last Saturday was my third time running DW One-shots with my friends. The third session was definitely the best and I attribute this to really delving into the players, asking them about their characters and using their answers. It helped that everyone playing this session had played a Table Top RPG before, and that our Paladin started off with "Orcs are evil, we kill Orcs who defiled our precious Elven home!" which led us into some LotR Two Towers type shenanigans.

What I came here to post though was my "Custom Moves" I had made during my second (#1 and #2) and third (#3 and #4) sessions and get some critique from more experienced DW GMs:

Stand Before the Visage of the Famine Godess posted:

Purpose: The Paladin had described the two gods of the realm, the benevolent "Harvest" god and the foul, omniscient "Famine" godess. I anticipated a show down with some sort of "hunger" elemental and I wanted there to be a serious "Woah this is not loving around" vibe.

Roll: 2d6 + CON

On a 10+ Choose 3, 7-9 Choose 2, 6- Choose 1:
  • You don't become Sick
  • You don't become Weak
  • Don't become ravaged by insatiable hunger
  • Consume all of one inventory item

Result: Looking back I see that 3 and 4 are kind of similar, but I wanted there to be _some_ choice of consequence for them. I didn't really explain what #3 meant, but I just used it as Reveal an Unwelcome Truth that they were losing control of their actions / rationality. I also didn't enforce the Sick / Weak penalties after the battle since it was sort of confusion for the newer players, I should have just made it -1 Ongoing or similar.

Confront the dreaded Snarflaughx! posted:

Purpose: The Bard had talked up this insatiable, chimeric creature that could read souls, manipulate minds and had chameleon like skin. I wanted them to roll this before they could even begin to attack it, sort of like a descriptive Defy Danger.

Roll: 2d6 + (INT or WIS)

On a 10+ Choose 3, 7-9 Choose 1, 6, you lose sight of the Snarflaughx and it hunts your soul:
  • Hide your soul from its unsavory gaze.
  • Don't fall for its manipulation
  • See it truly for the beast it is

Result: It did a really good job of ramping up the tension, pretty much everyone chose option #3 which allowed me to let the Snarflaughx begin feasting on the soul of a player or manipulating someone to lay prone and beg to be devoured. They eventually killed it by lulling it to sleep and slitting its throat, which I made them roll a Defy Danger. I had an awkward time pitting this "Great Beast" against the players because after the initial 7-9s, the players rolled straight 10+s to beat it. I feel like if it was a 16hp dragon, I didn't do a good job of portraying its danger, but then again they were just level 2 characters.

Tame a Tainted Beast of the Land posted:

Purpose: The Orc army is capturing and enslaving mystical animals of the land and bending them to their will. Anytime you try to subvert this magic or connect with the animal, make this move.

Roll: 2d6 + (WIS or CHA)

On a 10+ Choose 2, 7-9 Choose 1, On a 6-, the beast becomes enraged:
  • Halt the aggression of the animal
  • Work with the magic and try to dominate it
  • Set the animal free

Result: I ended up making a move that was half "Dominate the animal" and "Let the animal go" to give players the choice and agency. This definitely could have been smoothed out, but I made it in a minute and I wanted there to be a real cost of failing, that could escalate the situation.

Command the Elvish Battalion into Formation posted:

Purpose: The Elvish Paladin definitely had a "lordship" about him, and considering they were doing tactical movements, I really loved the idea of giving the character a move that demonstrated his heritage, strategic thinking and leadership. I based it off of the Druid's Shapeshift where he gets "Hold" to use, but on a Failure, the bumbling Steve Elf compromises the formation. They could spend any extra hold to give themselves +1 on the following roll as a "coordination" bonus.

Roll: 2d6 + CHA
On a 10+ Hold 3, 7-9 Hold 2, 6- Hold 1 and Steve Fucks up:
  • Valiantly Defend a person or position from Danger roll +Defend
  • Strike with sharp, but brittle weaponry roll Volley OR Hack and Slash
  • Aid a player's goal and provide support roll Aid or Interfere OR give Hold as +Forward to Elf Paladin

Result: This is definitely the move I was proudest of creating. It gave the player a sense of prestige, agency and someone to "yell at" when they 'failed'. The player also had +0 to their CHA score so watching this loud mouth Elf with mediocre social skills bully his group around when they failed was great character building. I ruled that the group got XP and not him for a failure.

Looking for some feedback but also recommendations on resources for some Advanced Move creation.

TaintedBalance
Dec 21, 2006

hope, n: desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfilment

I'm working on a Fire Emblem PBTA hack with a friend, and am looking for some feedback. First and foremost, we are focusing on the intra-group dynamics of the system, and not the tactical warfare. Second, it's okay to us if this isn't the best system for this idea, it's a shared experience with my friend, so while I'm definitely open to reading other sources, we are fairly set on using PBTA for this.

So we are using the Simple World starting point, and are going to be running our first one shot tonight or tomorrow, and I think we need to clean some stuff up about how we followed the template. This is only an hour or two of work, and we are following the advice of getting into playtesting immediately, but I figured you all know way more about this than we do. For stats we did this:

Reflexive/Graceful
  • Skill
  • Deft
Persuasive/Assertive
  • Speed
  • Tactics
Aggressive/Forceful
  • Strength
  • Power
  • Bravado
Calculating/Methodical
  • Magic
  • Strategy
Inquisitive/Exploratory
  • Luck

The first name listed is trying to stick to FE language, while any others are in rank order of what I think might work better for PBTA, especially looking at the advice over the last few pages. Magic and Strength in particular are the largest offenders from my perspective.

For classes we just listed some of the FE staples, I can list them if needed.

On the Agenda we did "How will the mercenary company survive in a big scary world?". However, on a reread this morning, I don't think we understood the question properly and thought of it from the MC perspective enough. I feel "Upset the balance of power" would work both better as an Agenda, and be FE as gently caress.

Principals was straight forward I think, we added "Sacrifices are permanent and meaningful" and "Nothing is as simple as it seems". These encapsulate the FE meta of permadeath/resource scarcity and layers of intrigue the storyline tends towards over the life of the series.

With MC Moves we went with "An innocent is put at risk" and "A relationship is put to the test", which once again draw directly from the narrative of the games.

Finally, for the Relationship stat we called it Support (obviously) and went with the two characters special scene = up 1, and public bickering = down 1.

We're already kicking the can around on how to handle the mercenary company overall, followers, additional units, resources, etc, BUT, as a huge fan of MVP, we are aggressively following the "playtest early and often mantra", so for the basics, does it look like we are moving in the right direction?

TaintedBalance
Dec 21, 2006

hope, n: desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfilment

Playtest Trip Report!

So we had a Caviler (mobile mounted shock troop), a Knight (heavily armored frontline defender), a Sniper (guerrilla warfare archer) and a Fighter (Axe wielding frontline bruiser). We did light narrative before jumping into battle, and oof, we definitely did the stats wrong. We're going to have to take a look at them and define where we want the game to go towards a bit more I think, but trying to apply the FE stat names to the PBTA stat concepts was a large whiff. Strength was a bit over relied upon (not surprising considering group composition), but people kept getting tripped up on Skill vs Speed. And no one used Magic. They are plainly now not nearly evocative enough.

Nothing super amazing came out of the players making up moves, although all of the moves are setting appropriate. This feels like its mostly a result of using a template framework, and we can use some of the ideas to iterate into better things.

Not a huge amount here, but I did want to thumbsup getting into playtesting asap. Getting immediate and meaningful feedback on features this early is great and actually makes us want to work on it more.

Roadie
Jun 30, 2013
Writers of PbtA hacks may find the Idyll project interesting. It's broadly meant for data presentation stuff, but it's also one of the least annoying Markdown variants I've seen for common output layout stuff (embedded tables/images, background images, sidebar notes, etc) without putting full-on HTML in your source file, and along with a normal compile mode, it also comes with the ability to automatically publish the compiled version to Github Pages using a (free) Github account.

mixmastermind
Jan 18, 2014
What's the math on how much the "roll 3d6 pick highest 2" mechanic, like Something Extra from Spirit of 77, affects the average roll?

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




mixmastermind posted:

What's the math on how much the "roll 3d6 pick highest 2" mechanic, like Something Extra from Spirit of 77, affects the average roll?

As I recall it's about even with a +1, but it's cooler because you roll more dice and get a "choice".

I'm working on a PbtA game with the Advantage mechanic now. I expect it to work out fine.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib

mixmastermind posted:

What's the math on how much the "roll 3d6 pick highest 2" mechanic, like Something Extra from Spirit of 77, affects the average roll?

If you go to Anydice, you can input the following:

output 2d6
output [highest 2 of 3d6]

This will show you the average of 2d6 and 3d6, pick highest two. The average ends up being 8.46. You actually get 9 about as often as you get 7 on 2d6. If you pick graph, you can see it a bit more clearly. 2d6 ends up being a triangle, raising up at each point at a fixed rate, while there's more of a gentle slope on the 3d6 keep the two highest.

Anydice is a pretty good tool for figuring out where the math actually is in your game.

mixmastermind
Jan 18, 2014

JackMann posted:

If you go to Anydice, you can input the following:

output 2d6
output [highest 2 of 3d6]

This will show you the average of 2d6 and 3d6, pick highest two. The average ends up being 8.46. You actually get 9 about as often as you get 7 on 2d6. If you pick graph, you can see it a bit more clearly. 2d6 ends up being a triangle, raising up at each point at a fixed rate, while there's more of a gentle slope on the 3d6 keep the two highest.

Anydice is a pretty good tool for figuring out where the math actually is in your game.

Oh wow that's a really useful website, bookmarking that.

BinaryDoubts
Jun 6, 2013

Looking at it now, it really is disgusting. The flesh is transparent. From the start, I had no idea if it would even make a clapping sound. So I diligently reproduced everything about human hands, the bones, joints, and muscles, and then made them slap each other pretty hard.

Roadie posted:

Writers of PbtA hacks may find the Idyll project interesting. It's broadly meant for data presentation stuff, but it's also one of the least annoying Markdown variants I've seen for common output layout stuff (embedded tables/images, background images, sidebar notes, etc) without putting full-on HTML in your source file, and along with a normal compile mode, it also comes with the ability to automatically publish the compiled version to Github Pages using a (free) Github account.

I've been experimenting with it the last few days. I just put up a little hack to play Paranoia. I've found it a little buggy and frustrating to use, although most of that is probably my lack of familiarity with Git and Javascript. That said, the final result ended up looking pretty nice, so I can't complain about it too much.

Devorum
Jul 30, 2005

I'm considering starting my first PbP game since I'm currently in a time zone and country where synchronous gaming is very difficult.

I've settled on PbtA as the system I want to use...are there any games you'd all recommend as being especially PbP friendly? Right now my top 4 are: Monster of the Week, Fellowship, Tremulus, and Apocalypse World...though I'm open to other suggestions.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Devorum posted:

I'm considering starting my first PbP game since I'm currently in a time zone and country where synchronous gaming is very difficult.

I've settled on PbtA as the system I want to use...are there any games you'd all recommend as being especially PbP friendly? Right now my top 4 are: Monster of the Week, Fellowship, Tremulus, and Apocalypse World...though I'm open to other suggestions.
Don't use Tremulus. It's bad.

Apocalypse World 2e is great and to be honest if you're into PbtA you should try it out at least once. As with OD&D's influence on TTRPGs in general, there are some elements that have become cargo-cult-ish defaults in PbtA design that ultimately stem from actually meaningful design choices in AW. It's also particularly PBP friendly because the game assumes that each character is going to spend a lot of time pursuing their own thing rather than acting as a cohesive group. So if someone posts more rarely or needs to take a break, it's a lot easier to account for that.

The revised edition of Monster of the Week is pretty good, especially if you lean into it's title and riff off things like Sailor Moon or X-Files, or the early parts of Hellboy or Fringe. It is however one of the more generic, paint-by-the-numbers PbtA games and can be a bit clunky.

Fellowship is great and does a lot of unique things with the PbtA formula. However it's very group-centric so you have the usual issues with making sure everyone keeps up. It's also fairly complex for a PbtA and takes some time to get the hang of. It's probably the least PBP friendly (besides Tremulus which is unfriendly to all play modes).

As another suggestion, as much as we talk about Dungeon World's faults, it's still fun to play and on the MC side is actually quite good. It can ease players used to "traditional" TTRPGs into PbtA quite well too.

BinaryDoubts
Jun 6, 2013

Looking at it now, it really is disgusting. The flesh is transparent. From the start, I had no idea if it would even make a clapping sound. So I diligently reproduced everything about human hands, the bones, joints, and muscles, and then made them slap each other pretty hard.
Anyone have thoughts on The Veil? The emotions-as-stats approach seems interesting, but I wonder how it goes in play?

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?

BinaryDoubts posted:

Anyone have thoughts on The Veil? The emotions-as-stats approach seems interesting, but I wonder how it goes in play?

I'm just going to quote myself from October.

Lurks With Wolves posted:

It's a few days late, but I've run a few sessions of The Sprawl and read through a reasonable chunk of The Veil so I might as well give my opinion.

Sprawl opinions cut.

The Veil... The quickstart for The Veil suggests that it's about Ghost In The Shell-style cyberpunk that's focused more on philosophy than being crushed in capitalism's gears. The Veil's aesthetic suggests that it's about GITS-style cyberpunk. The actual mechanics just don't feel like they gel into something that actually does that. It's not that the mechanics seem bad from my reading, it's that everything in the version I read just feels like it needs a few more editing passes. That doesn't sound like much, but it gets under your skin. Some of the rules aren't as explained as well as you'd want them to be, and it bugs you. You realize that the game talks about how being diverse and egalitarian and etc in cyberpunk is important, but then there's a few spots where some of the playbook options feel weirdly japanophilic and the playbooks would be better if they weren't. You come into the game expecting high-concept cyberpunk and one of the core playbooks is a member of a dying secret society with a cybertome and abilities based on finding true names and they're chased by iconoclasts whose true forms' description choices are lifted wholesale from the wolves that hunted the Solace in Apocalypse and it's all just tonally dissonant.

If I sound really down on The Veil, it's because I still want to like it despite itself. Hell, I still actually like it despite itself. Friends At The Table is currently running a game of The Veil, and I'd recommend checking it out if you want to hear someone actually play it. The only thing is, I'd trust that group to make a high-level philosophical cyberpunk anime out of thin air if they wanted to. I just don't feel like The Veil is going to give you that much moment-to-moment guidance on doing that if your group can't.

Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 11, 2018

BinaryDoubts
Jun 6, 2013

Looking at it now, it really is disgusting. The flesh is transparent. From the start, I had no idea if it would even make a clapping sound. So I diligently reproduced everything about human hands, the bones, joints, and muscles, and then made them slap each other pretty hard.
Cool, thanks. From my first reading, I definitely agree that it could use some more detailed explanation and edits - and maybe a little more guidance on what the players should be actually doing.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
The veil is weird, the stat setup is very generic (although I don’t think it fits cyberpunk since that genre is dominated by the emotionally suppressed) but the playbooks are absurdly specific and weird, like Just the Solace and Debt Cop. A lot of it is copied from other games as well which really stands out.

admanb
Jun 18, 2014

rumble in the bunghole posted:

The veil is weird, the stat setup is very generic (although I don’t think it fits cyberpunk since that genre is dominated by the emotionally suppressed) but the playbooks are absurdly specific and weird, like Just the Solace and Debt Cop. A lot of it is copied from other games as well which really stands out.

I think it suffers a lot from trying to build a broad themed game in PbtA.

I think it would've been much better as a Blades hack, with Girl By Moonlight style thematic "crew" playbooks.

Lupercalcalcal
Jan 28, 2016

Suck a dick, dumb shits

Error 404 posted:

This sounds cool, link?

Wow I totally missed checking this thread.

Here you go: Daylight Robbery

Edit:

Oh and there's a French version some folks translated out of an excess of keen: Braquage en Plein Jour

Drop Database
Feb 13, 2012
In the spirit of "I want Dungeon World but with fewer D&D clunks" I've been writing and running this thing. Name provisional, in fact, everything is provisional at this point. I'd love for you guys to have a look and give me some feedback. The system began out my frustration explaining the various clunky bits of DW, and is intended for one-shots, and introducing new players to PbtA, and even to role-playing in general. In that sense, it works pretty well. I've run it for many groups, with people with different levels of experiences, and several who totally new, and it took no time at all to get playing, but I know there are a ton of mechanical problems still to address, at least one more playbook, and all the GM-side stuff

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Overcome prevents DM from making slower soft moves.

A lot of these moves don’t get what you want on a 7.
The bonds of companionship move let you turn a 9 into a failure Or a 12 into a partial success, which is not done elsewhere in PbtA.

Patch it up and make yourself heard both have situations where you can roll, get a hit and not be any better than you were.
When you don’t get players at least some rewards for rolling they stop rolling.

From the wizard:
jewelled dagger (deadly: infighting): The word infighting might mean closer than arms reach but the much more common usage is fighting within an organization. As written, this dagger looks particularly good for stabbing a teammate during an argument.
.
The exact purpose of glory doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere. Is it XP?
If so, why do near death experiences cost you XP? Isn’t the hero who survives brushes with death more glorious than one who never gets it?

Drop Database
Feb 13, 2012

Golden Bee posted:

Overcome prevents DM from making slower soft moves.
Could you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean here. The intention of Overcome is to be a catch-all for things not covered by other moves (and also to be Act Under Fire)

Golden Bee posted:

A lot of these moves don’t get what you want on a 7.
The bonds of companionship move let you turn a 9 into a failure Or a 12 into a partial success, which is not done elsewhere in PbtA.
It's experimental. So far, nobody has used it to disappoint someone, but I'm 100% set on it

Golden Bee posted:

Patch it up and make yourself heard both have situations where you can roll, get a hit and not be any better than you were.
When you don’t get players at least some rewards for rolling they stop rolling.
I should amend Patch it Up, you're right. Make yourself heard, though, is a pretty straight port from Apoc World; it doesn't make the situation better necessarily, on a 7-9, but it does change it.

Golden Bee posted:

From the wizard:
jewelled dagger (deadly: infighting): The word infighting might mean closer than arms reach but the much more common usage is fighting within an organization. As written, this dagger looks particularly good for stabbing a teammate during an argument.
Haha, maybe that's not so bad :getin:. There is some potential for emergent PVP in the system, with increased aid/interfere potential and conflicting Glory goals. Infighting is supposed to be a shorter term for brawling in cramped quarters. This information should be on the move sheet; I'll add it

Golden Bee posted:

The exact purpose of glory doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere. Is it XP?
If so, why do near death experiences cost you XP? Isn’t the hero who survives brushes with death more glorious than one who never gets it?
The purpose of Glory is the Death or Glory move. You're supposed to hoard it and do crazy things with style. One of my favourite moments running this was when a player said "I want to something, but I will probably die". Well, there's a move for that!

madadric
May 18, 2008

Such a BK.

mixmastermind posted:

What's the math on how much the "roll 3d6 pick highest 2" mechanic, like Something Extra from Spirit of 77, affects the average roll?

i made this ages ago.

Bear Enthusiast
Mar 20, 2010

Maybe
You'll think of me
When you are all alone
Does anyone remember that Attack on Titan based hack "Titan World"? If so I'm looking for thoughts on how its combat ruleset worked out, as I'm eyeing it for a hack I'm working on. A quick and dirty summary is that there is one Move that can be used to actually put down one of the enemies (the titular Titans) but part of its trigger is having an Advantage that is usually set up via one of the other moves. An easy example is a move that involves using your wacky grappling hook belt to get to a new position that gives you an Advantage, which could then be expended in order to use the finisher. Teamwork of course being required because you would have playbooks that focus on one but not the other.

In addition to that idea, I was thinking there could be more interesting mechanical aspects to that concept like enemies that require more than one Advantage to have the finisher move be available, or enemies that can easily shed Advantages, that sort of thing.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Bear Enthusiast posted:

Does anyone remember that Attack on Titan based hack "Titan World"? If so I'm looking for thoughts on how its combat ruleset worked out, as I'm eyeing it for a hack I'm working on. A quick and dirty summary is that there is one Move that can be used to actually put down one of the enemies (the titular Titans) but part of its trigger is having an Advantage that is usually set up via one of the other moves. An easy example is a move that involves using your wacky grappling hook belt to get to a new position that gives you an Advantage, which could then be expended in order to use the finisher. Teamwork of course being required because you would have playbooks that focus on one but not the other.

In addition to that idea, I was thinking there could be more interesting mechanical aspects to that concept like enemies that require more than one Advantage to have the finisher move be available, or enemies that can easily shed Advantages, that sort of thing.

Read Fellowship.

Bear Enthusiast
Mar 20, 2010

Maybe
You'll think of me
When you are all alone

Golden Bee posted:

Read Fellowship.

Well I suppose I have no excuse not to anymore, thanks.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
I'm about to enter a Sprawl game as a Killer, and I feel like I have to be missing something.

The grand total of my playbook abilities seem to be one extra piece of cyberware with obligations attached and a custom weapon that is actually worse then the bog standard machete. And that's it. Like, I don't even feel like I'm actually better at killing dudes. And half the rules are different in other places! The pdf with just the playbooks gives them only one piece of cyberware, and in the actual main pdf example of character creation, that Killer gets three enhancements to their weapon!

So...what am I missing here? Is the "Blade" option actually a joke? Am I in fact just a super generic dude with a slightly better gun (and you better choose a gun!) who's even more hunted or owned?

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
I think it really values Implant as a tag, more than it probably should, and you can’t really take many augmentations at the start, which sucks for what is set up as a heavily enhanced murder cyborg. That and it’s basically just a Fighter playbook with a couple cooler options. At the very least I’d make the weapon a custom combat upgrade over a battlebabe copy paste.

I think the reason to play the killer is to have busted numbers from the gate. You can take a crazy custom sword, Milspec and cyberarms and be a small gang with 6 harm and 2 armour, which should be enough to ruin basically anything in your way until the gm turns the game into an action movie and starts throwing choppers at you, because the game mechanics were designed for mad max with pvp and social manipulation rules.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Jan 19, 2018

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

rumble in the bunghole posted:

I think it really values Implant as a tag, more than it probably should, and you can’t really take many augmentations at the start, which sucks for what is set up as a heavily enhanced murder cyborg. That and it’s basically just a Fighter playbook with a couple cooler options. At the very least I’d make the weapon a custom combat upgrade over a battlebabe copy paste.

I think the reason to play the killer is to have busted numbers from the gate. You can take a crazy custom sword, Milspec and cyberarms and be a small gang with 6 harm and 2 armour, which should be enough to ruin basically anything in your way until the gm turns the game into an action movie and starts throwing choppers at you, because the game mechanics were designed for mad max with pvp and social manipulation rules.

This is kinda why im a little cold on the sprawl.

Mission and Corp clocks are cool ideas, but on the player side it feels a little...dungeon world-y.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.
The Killer's trick, which the book does a poor job of describing, is all about maximizing cyberware. For the other playbooks, cyberware is a bit of a catch-22. To really get a lot out of it, you need to combo certain pieces and you'd also like to have a high Synth. However, with the exception of the Driver, going Synth+2 means they'll be rolling lower on their core moves so it's not a great choice. Going lower Synth then makes 'ware less attractive, and will either still cut into their initial utility because a stat they'll use more often is worse, or will force them to spend advancements later to catch back up - and will probably entail at least one advancement that is effectively a null step. The end result is the other playbooks have a lot of pressure to put a low score in Synth and only dip their toes into 'ware, if even that, and spend their advancements and resources elsewhere.

For the Killer, cyberware can always be an immediate plus without trade offs. They're essentially one of only two playbooks (the other is the Hacker) where a starting with or advancing to Synth+1 makes sense, since they'll start with enough 'ware for it to be useful and have incentive to get even more. They can also quickly build the 'ware combos that produce deeply scary combat numbers - a Meat+2 Synth+1 Killer with Cyberarms/Augmented Strength and Muscle Grafts at character creation is at +2 to mix it up and will deal +3 harm with their melee weapon. If they take More Machine Than Meat to also select Synthetic Nerves, they will usually be at +3 to mix it up with additional benefits. And they'll still be very good with a gun with the option to get even better - that +1 Synth gets added to their firearms damage if they later snag a Neural Interface/Targeting Suite.

At core the Killer's deal is that cyberware is good and they're the ones who get to play with all of it. They start ahead of the 'ware curve and stay there. In theory other playbooks could go that way as well, but in practice they have strong disincentives to that approach, and even if they ignore those they'll still be behind the Killer. It's one of those cases where the playbook doesn't so much use its custom moves to create it's own space, but instead leverages a set of mechanics theoretically open to all playbooks to the point that they're actually doing something unique with it.

That being said, their Custom Weapon move is pretty flat. It's solid for guns, decent for melee implant weapons, and bad for non-implant melee weapons. A melee focused Killer who doesn't want implant weapons is definitely better off with a non-custom blade, with their Custom Weapon creating a specialized backup that covers what their blade doesn't. Personally I think the Killer would be better off with a slightly expanded gear list and a move that further leverages their tendency to acquire more 'ware.

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?

ProfessorCirno posted:

I'm about to enter a Sprawl game as a Killer, and I feel like I have to be missing something.

The grand total of my playbook abilities seem to be one extra piece of cyberware with obligations attached and a custom weapon that is actually worse then the bog standard machete. And that's it. Like, I don't even feel like I'm actually better at killing dudes. And half the rules are different in other places! The pdf with just the playbooks gives them only one piece of cyberware, and in the actual main pdf example of character creation, that Killer gets three enhancements to their weapon!

So...what am I missing here? Is the "Blade" option actually a joke? Am I in fact just a super generic dude with a slightly better gun (and you better choose a gun!) who's even more hunted or owned?

Technically you only need one pick to make the blade option equivalent to a sword/machete and you get two to three, so your custom weapon isn't going to be worse than a machete. Still, Custom Weapon is still weird and not great for melee weapons unless you want to make something weird like a stun knife or a sword with autofire or you're really attached to the mental image of a streetsam with a custom blade.

As a side note, this conversation is reminding me of how much I dislike the way harm ramps for combat-focused characters in The Sprawl. It's really easy for characters with combat-focused cybernetics to do 5+ harm at a base level, and it might be appropriate for the capital-K Killer to be doing "they are dead" levels of damage every time when they're at their peak but it ruins my entire sense of scale for harm.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Killers kill.

Get the gently caress out the way.

---
I’ve made my feelings about the sprawl clear over the course of this thread, But having played the soldier they are a team bonus machine. Add the Neural Interface with Targeting Suite... And you can be throwing down for a five harm, in a crowd, without any possibility of having your teammates.

Not at all their moves are great. With recruiter you have either one reliable guy you can add to the team or a bunch of imbeciles.

---
I’ve also noticed that there will always, always be an infiltrator on the team. I’ve never seen a core playbook be so necessary in any powered by the apocalypse game.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
yeah the more sprawl I see the less I like it. I enjoy creating the corps as worldbuilding and the clocks are a pretty good way of doing a timing mechanic in a wibbly wobbly storygame but the playbooks are boring and hacking is hosed. I find the mission structure pretty wack anyway. It's more restrictive than it should be, since running missions set by a Mr Johnson makes it more reactive, rather than proactive like blades in the dark or just having a generalised thing.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jan 19, 2018

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
alternate hack and slash/volley/defend for Dungeon World

quote:

When you Fight Together, everyone involved rolls +their combat stat
On a 7+, choose one
deal +1 Harm
Reduce incoming harm by 1
You interfere with their plan
You learn something useful about the situation
You expose a chunk of the enemies to harm

Then add them together and trade harm for harm with the enemy, dealing the total harm to each character exposed to attacks or explicitly targeted
On a 7-9, you get isolated from the rest of the team and are put into some danger you need to defy before you can fight together with the team

Needs a lot of reworking of the game to really function and I'm not sure about the 7-9. Shout out to Tunnels and Trolls though

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.
I think the Sprawl shows a lot of its warts during set up, but in play it's a lot like early MotW where you end up paring down the decision space to the point it mostly runs just fine. That being said, it could use another heavy pass of polish. The Driver has the old bad "add vehicle stats to your moves" thing going on, for example.

Golden Bee posted:

I’ve also noticed that there will always, always be an infiltrator on the team. I’ve never seen a core playbook be so necessary in any powered by the apocalypse game.
I have seen a game without one and it actually is totally fine.

However, I think you're right that there's an issue with the Infiltrator's concept. While mechanically it's not critical, the narrative space is so deeply ingrained in the genre that someone almost invariably gravitates to it, which suggests that its de rigeur enough to just give a solid part of it's narrative space to everyone, the way everyone gets gigs in AW 2e.

Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jan 19, 2018

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Bear Enthusiast
Mar 20, 2010

Maybe
You'll think of me
When you are all alone

Golden Bee posted:

Read Fellowship.

Goddamn does Fellowship basically do exactly what I want. Now I just want to play that instead of whatever dumb hack idea I had.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply