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Lemon-Lime posted:Someone sell me on Fragged Empire. How complex is it? How's the balance? Are any of the supplements any good? it seems cool, but the book is laid out like a reference document, making the game kinda difficult to learn. supposedly once you learn it the layout makes it easy to make rulings on things, but i've yet to get over the hump of actually learning the drat thing. it is pretty crunchy though
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Mar 5, 2018 15:17
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The book-learning issues mentioned by Serf aside, Fragged Empire is the most well-spoken-of tactical combat-heavy game I've heard of since D&D 4e itself (Strike! notwithstanding, but Strike! a much lighter system).
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Mar 5, 2018 15:26
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Put it this way: do you like new XCOM? Fragged Empires lets you run it out of the box with absolutely 0 changes necessary...including the research/engineering/strategic sections. And you have plot armor so you don't have to be afraid of random oneshots in the process.
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Mar 5, 2018 15:32
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Lemon-Lime posted:Someone sell me on Fragged Empire. How complex is it? How's the balance? Are any of the supplements any good? http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/evil-mastermind/fragged-empire/
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Mar 5, 2018 16:48
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S.J. posted:i'm getting a group together to make WHFRPG3e characters tomorrow night and I'm so loving excited I really want to see the EotE dice attached to a better system. D&D 4e with ffg dice would be amazing.
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Mar 5, 2018 16:58
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 New blogpost is up for Let Thrones BewareToday's topic: Hope vs. Fear - how I wrote Let Thrones Beware to be an escape from everyday awfulness Here's the second post of my new approach to Let Thrones Beware blogging. Continuing last week's discussion on the themes of the game, this week's edition is all about how I approached writing to ensure that LTB is a game about hope rather than a game of fear.
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Mar 5, 2018 17:26
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My favorited Fragged Empire thing is still the Professor of Punchology. So one of the more important mechanics in the game is free time- everyone gets a certain amount of spare time rolls, which are used in various ways- for example, acquiring and selling trade goods, purchasing or building items with a spare time requirement, or research. Research requires a work area and a subject to study. Each spare time roll spent helps accumulate research points; at certain breakpoints in your research collection, you can earn secret knowledge or perks based on your field of study. (Certain items and character traits require secret knowledge before you can get them.) You can also publish your research, getting influence with the group you publish with and also a bonus to future research. Any secret knowledge you learn from your research is shared with the group. One of the traits that requires secret knowledge is martial arts. You research this with, for example, recording of people’s fighting styles and a dedicated physical skills workshop (or, you know, a ‘gym’.) Once you hit 12 units of research, you get the secret knowledge and can take the trait on level up. Then you can publish your martial arts style manual and gain influence because you’re a well known professor of punching people in the face.
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Mar 5, 2018 17:42
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unseenlibrarian posted:Then you can publish your martial arts style manual and gain influence because you’re a well known professor of punching people in the face. Also known as "opened a fighting school." 
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Mar 5, 2018 19:15
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If I met someone who literally wrote the book on killing people with your bare hands I too would probably be quite respectful.
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Mar 5, 2018 19:15
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I just like the fact that you can be a space pirate who's also a published a well-respected scientific paper on quasars.
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Mar 5, 2018 19:26
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Fragged Empire seems pretty solid, so I'll be getting it. Anyone have anything to say about Fragged Aeternum/Seas/Kingdom or the Protagonist/Antagonist Archives?
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Mar 5, 2018 |
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Mar 5, 2018 20:43
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Protag Archive adds four new races, more character options, and a bunch of organizations PCs can ally with. Antag Archive is basically a monster manual that also includes bad guy organizations and locations. They're both good, but if you just wanted one I'd go with Antagonist's Archive just to cut down on the GM bad-guy-stating overhead. Aeternum is basically grid-based Soulsbourne, complete with respawning mechanics and a heavy focus on melee combat.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:07
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Lemon-Lime posted:Fragged Empire seems pretty solid, so I'll be getting it. Anyone have anything to say about Fragged Aeternum or the Protagonist/Antagonist Archives? Protagonist Archive is basically the Player's Companion- stuff that didn't fit in the core but was planned for it, as I understand it. NEW PC species, other extra traits/stuff for equipment, more on psychic stuff. Antagonist archive is about as close as we've gotten to a monster manual, being a combination enemy NPC writeup book/guide to rear end in a top hat factions. Fragged Aeternum is basically a hack to do Soulsborne stuff. It's both slightly higher powered (In that you wind up with slightly more potent equipment starting out and are generally assumed to be trained at fighting) and also deadlier, because you're expected to be able to die and come back and you die a little faster than the default rules . It adds explicit rules for multi-part bosses, among other things.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:10
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Lemon-Lime posted:Fragged Empire seems pretty solid, so I'll be getting it. Anyone have anything to say about Fragged Aeternum/Seas/Kingdom or the Protagonist/Antagonist Archives? Protag/Antag: good 'poo poo we couldn't fit in the core book but also useful to have' books, I'd say to get those asap, Antagonist first just because every GM needs a monster manual. Aeternum: like said, it's Soulsborne complete with respawn mechanics and multiphase fights. Cool concept but if you're not big into playing a tabletop Dark Souls it won't win you over. Seas/Kingdom: Very good games that bring the Fragged style to high seas and fantasy genres. They refine the system as needed to better fit the genre, Seas for example has a revamped momentum system and all so you can buckle swashes more stylishly. I'd rank these higher than Aternum because they're much less niche, genre books rather than a hyper specific kind of video game and all, but again only needed if your group is going 'I sure love playing Fragged Empires but gee whiz I wish we were wizards on the oceans instead!' Though, you may want to cannibalize the rules tweaks for your main game, I forgot what changed where though so someone with a better memory can tell you if there's one that adds something big or something.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:43
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Transient People posted:Put it this way: do you like new XCOM? Fragged Empires lets you run it out of the box with absolutely 0 changes necessary...including the research/engineering/strategic sections. And you have plot armor so you don't have to be afraid of random oneshots in the process. I'm ordering a copy right now.
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Mar 5, 2018 22:25
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Fragged Empire is one of the better games on the market right now, and certainly one of the best sci-fi titles. It's got really coherent mechanics that stay interesting for quite a while, and some decent fluff. I haven't devoted much time to Seas or Kingdom, but I was disappointed by Aeternum. It feels less like a complete product, and more like you got handed someone's table notes from their Bloodborne knockoff campaign. There's leaving blank spaces on the map for players and GMs to fill out, and then there's "Uh, a big city, something about the afterlife, hey how about that Yharnam, huh?" I kickstarted the whole set, and while I would be happy to pay full retail for Empire, I would hesitate to buy Aeternum even if it was on sale.
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Mar 5, 2018 22:32
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Just to point out: the Fragged Empire PDF is currently on sale for $12 on DriveThru. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/151898/Fragged-Empire--Core-Rule-Book
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Mar 5, 2018 22:59
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Evil Mastermind posted:Just to point out: the Fragged Empire PDF is currently on sale for $12 on DriveThru. All of the books except Seas are 33% off in the GM sale, even.
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Mar 5, 2018 23:13
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Splicer posted:EotE has a more refined dice system than WHFRP3 but is a step backwards in literally every other respect. The removal of the wounds system was just one travesty. As someone who loves EotE but never got to play WHFRP3, how does the wound system work and what does it do/encourage that makes removing it a massive step back?
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Mar 6, 2018 00:16
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I'm gonna have to invest in a hardcover for Fragged Empire. It's just not clicking, and I think the inability to quickly flip pages is the issue for me (since that's literally my learning process for rpgs).
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Mar 6, 2018 01:18
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The hardcover is fantastic, but good lord is it expensive and hard to find used. Good on them for having such a successful, well-made game though.
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Mar 6, 2018 03:27
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S.J. posted:The Warhammer version had a variety of neat things you could spend the secondary resource good/bad stuff on based on a) the abilitiy cards you were using b) whether or not you were a spellcaster and what kind and c) the specific environment you were in (there were dozens of these, easily), which could be anywhere from an abandoned shrine to a blasted chaos hellscape with magical fissures bursting forth from the ground. In Star Wars I usually just ended up using them to give myself another bonus dice on my next roll most of the time This sounds like a whole bunch of poo poo my players would never ever learn to track, and I wouldn't want to track for them All the possible options for Star Wars dice (there are a ton of basic options + each skill has options and talents add them) were too much Thankfully wfrp3 was super expensive so I never bothered and 1e destroys Hopefully the new edition is as good as it's cover art, or at least as good as Zweihander
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Mar 6, 2018 03:36
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It's literally just printed on the cards in front of you
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Mar 6, 2018 06:10
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Lemon-Lime posted:All of the books except Seas are 33% off in the GM sale, even. And now Seas is today's Deal of the Day for $10, so there you go!
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Mar 6, 2018 17:04
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Warning! Workouts and the Super fit The fictional World of LIFTS® is very achievable for the determined and the sincerely committed. Other dimensional beings, often referred to as "demons," teach, spot and praise humans. Other alien life forms, monsters, gods and demigods, as well as meal prep, insane dedication, and weightlifting are all elements in this book. Some parents may find the exercising and super-fun calisthenics of the game inappropriate for young readers/players. We suggest parental discretion. Please note that all of us at Advanced Might Makes Right® condone and encourage weightlifting, the practice of athletics, the importance of healthy eating, and cardio.
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Mar 6, 2018 17:26
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Fragged Empire is excellent in play, and even my most cheese-worthy, “4e hybrid-multiclass Essentials+Core now I can solo Demogorgon at level 22” player hasn’t been able to break it over his knee yet. There are a couple of critiques/warnings even after you’ve puzzled out the layout, though: • the book just tells the GM to “set a leveling/rewards rate suitable to your preferred play” without really getting into what that means and what some of your options are. • it really could have used more guidance on “how does a skilled opponent with 4 armor differ from a henchman mob with 20 defense”, and likewise for the totally sweet but not terribly newbie-friendly weapon/armor customization; it’s easy enough to build a player with a constantly missing weapon or one that doesn’t punch through anyone’s armor, and really easy for player and GM alike to build a scenario where your starting PC just goes down to a henchman mob that got lucky, and has to sink Spare Time (a game resource) into healing for a significant while. • the usual D&D-school design issue of “combat abilities are clearly defined, non-combat less so.” Outside of the discrete targets for gear modification, trade goods, and research rolls, it’s pretty nebulous what benefits you’d get from having Bio Tech at +4 vs +0, or what would be a normal (difficulty 12) vs hard (difficulty 16) use of the skill. • bloody Australian spelling. Not even my computer recognizes “defence”, Wade. Surrender to American English! As a pretty big fan of the system, it’s sad (but not surprising) to read about people having a hard time getting it to click - the best advice I can offer is to check the chargen chapter, then skip to the combat moves - those 16 options define most of what you can do, and what the stats actually give you (some, like Focus, are barely even mentioned outside of these moves, which can lead you to miss that they are very, very important)
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Mar 6, 2018 17:44
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Is the Fragged HACK official errata...thing worth looking into?
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Mar 6, 2018 17:45
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food court bailiff posted:Is the Fragged HACK official errata...thing worth looking into?
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Mar 6, 2018 17:53
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food court bailiff posted:Is the Fragged HACK official errata...thing worth looking into? Meh. It’s got five things in it: • Tolatl & halfbreed stats. They seem neat but they have basically no FE lore yet besides “small lizard/frogpeople, engineered as living toolboxes by the Archons, also you can take one trait to have an entire astronomical telescope in your tail.” And my furry/scalie player already has a Remnant PC, so nobody was too interested. Likewise halfbreeds. • Revised Stealth rules. I don’t like them. Stealth as an attack was much more interesting to me, the revision removes most of the tactical aspect of the Stealth move and ties it to survivalist-types only (I mean, I especially dislike it because it would ruin my character’s concept as an urban scientist-spy who steals other peoples’ research, but even in general I’m not a big fan). • Revised Skills-modified-by-ability-scores rules. I hate these. I guess there may be some balance issues where certain stats weren’t weighted or interesting enough without giving skill mods, but I haven’t run into that in play, and I prefer the base ruleset of “if the GM agrees you can get +1 or +2 for having a high appropriate stat, not stacking with other Description bonuses.” • Revised trade goods rules to give them subtypes like in Fragged Kingdoms. No opinion; we haven’t adopted these because we’re rotating GMs and the system’s still pretty new to them. • Outpost rules for FE, which basically say “reference Fragged Kingdoms but tech it up a bit” So basically: nah, not really worth it, especially not just starting off with Fragged Empire.
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Mar 6, 2018 18:22
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It's basically a rough draft for what apparently is going to be called "The Explorer's archive", for Boldly going where no Kaltoran has gone before, which will have cleaned up stuff on the Tolatl, space outposts, and etc and doing deep exploration of uncharted space.
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Mar 6, 2018 20:28
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Five years ago I was called a troll when I posted on the board game thread that the board game Uno would receive a sequel called Dos. Now I am vindicated.
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Mar 6, 2018 20:41
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Holy shitballs. They're playtesting for Pathfinder 2e. http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest
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Mar 6, 2018 23:22
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dwarf74 posted:Holy shitballs. The darkest timeline.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:25
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dwarf74 posted:Holy shitballs. It's just going to be Pathfinder with very minor changes to justify changing the cover and charging money again.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:25
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's just going to be Pathfinder with very minor changes to justify changing the cover and charging money again. Oh you had better believe it. "Fixing" in this case will be "changing everything just enough that it's less of a cluttered, overstuffed mess for at least a few months."
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Mar 6, 2018 23:27
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But 10th level spells!
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Mar 6, 2018 23:42
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Lol The first heading is literally "New, but the Same" http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkl9?First-Look-at-the-Pathfinder-Playtest e: Seriously it's like "this is super innovative!... if all you know is Pathfinder..." dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Mar 6, 2018 |
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Mar 6, 2018 23:46
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This is the worst idea and I love that they're doing this and await the apocalypse.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:46
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Transient People posted:Put it this way: do you like new XCOM? Fragged Empires lets you run it out of the box with absolutely 0 changes necessary...including the research/engineering/strategic sections. And you have plot armor so you don't have to be afraid of random oneshots in the process. Can you go into more detail about this? I'm very interested in the notion of a RPG that works great for XCOM.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:54
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You know, I hate to be the one to say it but nearly all of the ideas in that update are great revisions that will add to the game. Pathfunder is badly in need of a GURPS 4-style reboot and this looks to be it.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:56
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