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Halloween Jack posted:BESM is basically a universal system with a focus on anime. The best part is probably how skills can cost differently depending on what genre you're going for. But at this point, if I want to play a game about a high school tennis team, I will probably go with a more narrative system. Yeah, this. BESM has some good ideas but it's very easy to break and the game makes that your problem. Sometimes it's obvious (e.g. it's possible to take the Companion Attribute to get some loyal NPC friends, then have them take Companion and so on until you're running Shadaloo, and you should probably not do that if this is a slice-of-life game about a light music club) but sometimes it's not. If anyone's actually looking for an anime RPG, I've heard good things about OVA.
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Mar 29, 2018 14:51
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Yea, there's some weird decisions there. Planescape being a separate entry (it should be under D&D surely) and then being better than UA? Synnibar being better than Shadowrun? And BESM, yea, it was one of those dumb early-weeaboo systems that attempted to tackle "anime" as a single genre. It has a 2d6 roll-under system where having skills or powers erodes your stats, but stats are all you roll on for success. There was a Western superhero spin off - Silver Age Sentinels - and I remember a post on The Forge from a beginning player who had tried to make Spiderman and give him a bunch of powers representing what he could do with his webs, only to have him unable to do any of them because his stats were too low. Hang on, they said, can't Spidey do those things explicitly because he's good with his webs, rather than getting worse with them because he's realized how to do things with them? (It also had one of the most ridiculous sidebars I've ever seen, almost a half-page on "why human comic book characters have stats above the ones labelled as 'maximum human potential'.")
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Mar 29, 2018 14:56
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hyphz posted:Yea, there's some weird decisions there. Planescape being a separate entry (it should be under D&D surely) and then being better than UA? Synnibar being better than Shadowrun? It's a joke except D&D 4e over 3e is totes legit
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Mar 29, 2018 14:58
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counterspin posted:Well, I mean, don't all systems have a linear mech pilot, quadratic tennis champ problem at some level? it's the struggle of the hobby
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Mar 29, 2018 14:59
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potatocubed posted:All I know about BESM is a friend of mine played in a game once where he made a mecha pilot complete with mecha, and his other half made a character based on some tennis manga (Prince of Tennis?) -- and whose serve could one-shot the giant robot. Clearly the best way to run BESM is to have everyone break the system in some way, then run some Danganronpa style cast where everyone is some peerless prodigy in some thing but the game is a genre that doesn't necessarily match any of them.
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Mar 29, 2018 15:00
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Hey, SAS wasn't so bad! I mean, I shelled out for the deluxe version and then never ran it, and just ended up playing M&M instead, and...oh boy, I bet if I read it again it hasn't aged well.
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Mar 29, 2018 15:18
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Yeah. BESM has enough problems that if you sit down and detail them all, you'd be there for awhile, but the biggest are the resolution system breaking down after any attempt at at maximizing a stat or skill, or the fact that the traits vary from "you're pretty with no game effect" to "ability to do literally anything as long as you roll well" doesn't help either. I did a lot with Tri-Stat back in the day (I demoed for Guardians of Order a few times) and had to come up with some significant house rules to make it functional. OVA is the BESM successor that's functional out of the box, though. You just need to either ban the Transform trait or set it at a fixed level for everybody in the campaign. Halloween Jack posted:Hey, SAS wasn't so bad! SAS probably would have been considered groundbreaking if M&M hadn't come out right after. M&M did nearly everything better save for not having an established setting like SAS did, and superhero settings in RPGs are often pretty superfluous in my opinion unless you have a specific gimmick. The main issue it has is that it doesn't really account for the curve on its main 2d10 resolution mechanic, so properly maximized characters can exploit that curve. Thankfully by that point they'd added "contested rolls should be handled by margin of success", so fights didn't take an eternity. However, the confusing thing about that system is that it has attributes rated 1-10 and skills rated 1-5, and the system is roll 2d10 under attribute + skill to gain success. If you can guess this makes it very hard to get anything done unless you have a trait maximized, you're right. The key thing is that any roll is supposed to have "superheroic feat" (like lifting a building, dodging a bullet, hacking NORAD) being the baseline level of difficulty, and anything easier than that is supposed to have the GM throwing around bonuses like wild, so that ordinary people with their average attribute of 4 are getting like a -8 on their roll when trying to unlock a door or make a hard turn at 60 MPH or whatever. The problem is, of course, the baseline for a "superheroic feat" is massively nebulous, and figuring out what sort of bonuses you're supposed hand out is similarly unclear. The other problem is that (in my experience) GMs forgetting or overlooking that fact and just running SAS without those bonuses. I'm not sure why Tri-Stat increased the die size of its main resolution mechanic (from 2d6 to 2d10) when dealing with higher-powered settings rather than decreasing it (and SAS actually lowered the maximum attribute cap). But I suppose it seemed logical to someone. It's a very fine looking book for the time, though, save for the occasional use of Comic Sans.
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Mar 29, 2018 16:06
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Ettin posted:(e.g. it's possible to take the Companion Attribute to get some loyal NPC friends, then have them take Companion and so on until you're running Shadaloo, and you should probably not do that if this is a slice-of-life game about a light music club) I Can't Believe My Bassist Is A Third-World Dictator!
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Mar 29, 2018 16:17
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I’ll check out OVA then, thanks!
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Mar 29, 2018 17:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's a joke I realized it was a joke when CthulhuTech won over Call of Cthulhu, although BESM winning overall should've been the key (I'm just not as familiar with it as I am CoC/Ettin's CthulhuTech review).
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Mar 29, 2018 17:12
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Break!! is under development too. http://www.breakrpg.com/
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Mar 29, 2018 17:31
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Valor is a fighty anime game with some 4E inspiration and is pretty fun from...the one time I played. The forum's own Professor Prof ? (May be misremembering the username) worked on it at one point, though I think he's no longer with the group doing it, IIRC.
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Mar 29, 2018 18:18
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hyphz posted:Yea, there's some weird decisions there. Planescape being a separate entry (it should be under D&D surely) and then being better than UA? Synnibar being better than Shadowrun? The brackets aren’t even balanced, where the hell is Teenagers from Outer Space?
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Mar 29, 2018 18:31
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DalaranJ posted:The brackets aren’t even balanced, where the hell is Teenagers from Outer Space? TFOS was too powerful for it. Sometimes I think Teenagers from Outer Space is too powerful for this world, because the most common conversation I've had about TFOS is "Man, I used to love that but I don't even know where my copy is now." unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 29, 2018 19:04
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DalaranJ posted:The brackets aren’t even balanced, where the hell is Teenagers from Outer Space? https://twitter.com/Ettin64/status/979165664953827328
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Mar 29, 2018 19:05
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I'm glad we could finally close the book on these contentious RPG subjects, and now this forum can likewise be closed and we will all move on over to ADTRW.
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Mar 29, 2018 19:08
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He's right because all the games I play are on the brackets
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Mar 29, 2018 19:19
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Good things about BESM: The system is so universal you can conceivably make a space god or a really cool karate-learning senpai using the same kind of stats. Bad things about BESM: Literally everything else. It's fine as babby's first RPG to gently caress around in and ignite the imagination (especially if you love anime) but boy oh boy does it not have legs.
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Mar 29, 2018 19:53
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Ettin posted:(e.g. it's possible to take the Companion Attribute to get some loyal NPC friends, then have them take Companion and so on until you're running Shadaloo, and you should probably not do that if this is a slice-of-life game about a light music club) Excuse me but how the hell else are you going to model the Student Council's infinite faceless minions?
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Mar 29, 2018 20:12
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I found out the stupid new DotA cardgame is actually designed by Rich Garfield so I hope it's an insane megagrog cardgame that scares normal people and costs blizzard a huge amount of money that will infuriatingly be negated by a weekend of csgo cosmetics sales
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Mar 29, 2018 22:22
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Then again people got super pissed by it not being HL3 lol so who knows
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Mar 29, 2018 22:23
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Ettin posted:Yeah, this. BESM has some good ideas but it's very easy to break and the game makes that your problem. Sometimes it's obvious (e.g. it's possible to take the Companion Attribute to get some loyal NPC friends, then have them take Companion and so on until you're running Shadaloo, and you should probably not do that if this is a slice-of-life game about a light music club) but sometimes it's not. Running Shadaloo might actually be balanced in a slice-of-life game about a light music club. "How are we going to get Balrog-sempai, Vega-sempai, and Mike-kun on the school trip? Their school ID pictures got mixed-up again!" Ahem. Breaks pretty bad if you're trying to run Street Fighter, though.
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Mar 29, 2018 22:42
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Plutonis posted:Then again people got super pissed by it not being HL3 lol so who knows What is it like to still be a Valve fan these days? It must hurt so much.
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Mar 30, 2018 00:14
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So with Dragon Ball Super over I have been in a bit of a Dragon Ball mood, and I found out there's a Dragon Ball Super TCG that, from the reviews I've read, is actually pretty good. Does anyone have experience with it?
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Mar 30, 2018 01:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:What is it like to still be a Valve fan these days? It must hurt so much.
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Mar 30, 2018 01:35
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Hiro Protagonist posted:So with Dragon Ball Super over I have been in a bit of a Dragon Ball mood, and I found out there's a Dragon Ball Super TCG that, from the reviews I've read, is actually pretty good. Does anyone have experience with it? I actually sorta don't like it as a game, but it's definitely a nice object(s) and has an active playerbase. The slightly older DBZ TCG (the one published by Panini) is a lot more interesting mechanically and it has a pretty diehard playerbase that still runs fan tournaments at major cons (gencon primarily) and plays online.
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Mar 30, 2018 03:31
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unseenlibrarian posted:Valor is a fighty anime game with some 4E inspiration and is pretty fun from...the one time I played. The forum's own Professor Prof ? (May be misremembering the username) worked on it at one point, though I think he's no longer with the group doing it, IIRC. Man, I'd forgotten about that one, and I have it on my shelf. I'd really like to give it a try someday.
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Mar 30, 2018 17:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Man, I'd forgotten about that one, and I have it on my shelf. I'd really like to give it a try someday. I've heard good things, so it's time for someone to F&F it.
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Mar 30, 2018 19:51
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Lemon-Lime posted:I've heard good things, so it's time for someone to F&F it. My F&F card is full for practically all time, sadly.
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Mar 30, 2018 21:02
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Idea: A warforged rogue called Thomas the DPS Engine. (alternative: Thomas the Shank Engine)
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Mar 30, 2018 23:02
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Lemon-Lime posted:I've heard good things, so it's time for someone to F&F it. Once tax season is over and I'm no longer working 60 hour weeks, I'll begin to do it and then fail immediately without announcing anything.
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Mar 30, 2018 23:05
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Covok posted:Once tax season is over and I'm no longer working 60 hour weeks, I'll begin to do it and then fail immediately without announcing anything. Setting realistic goals is important. I gotta get back to work on my F&F.
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Mar 30, 2018 23:25
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Valor had an F&F. IIRC, it's pretty good for a toolbox system?
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Mar 31, 2018 00:45
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LogicNinja posted:Idea: A warforged rogue called Thomas the DPS Engine. Okay, this is gonna happen now.
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Mar 31, 2018 00:52
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For anyone who owns it, does the Valor PDF have bookmarks yet?
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Mar 31, 2018 01:15
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:For anyone who owns it, does the Valor PDF have bookmarks yet? Nope, it really is my only complaint with the system. But Ive only run a couple of test combats so take that with a grain of salt.
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Mar 31, 2018 01:44
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Zurui posted:Okay, this is gonna happen now. HELL YEAH. Also consider my thunder-power-wielding bard, THE FACE OF BASS.
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Mar 31, 2018 03:12
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Zurui posted:Okay, this is gonna happen now. Warning: gets speaker-ruiningly/deafeningly loud after 27 seconds, please adjust volume accordingly for your own safety.
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Mar 31, 2018 07:19
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hey everyone! i bought some gift certs the other day with the intention of giving them away, so i made a puzzle thread in GBS to help our dear old lowtax get better. cert of choice to the first to solve a particular puzzle! #1 and #2 are already done, #3 is currently under way, and I have at least 2 more ready to go! for some examples of the kind of puzzles we're talking about, here's the two that were already solved: #1 #1 solution it's morse code. green is dash, yellow is dot, red is space the answer turns out to be 'Goku69' #2 kumba posted:okay, here's round 2, slightly harder: #2 hints kumba posted:hint #1: Treating this as a word search is not likely to prove very useful. #2 solution kumba posted:this one is quite a bit more abstract. you'll quickly find that treating it as an actual word search is useless, and i dropped a (small, obscure) hint in there that doing so is frivolous: thanks!!
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Mar 31, 2018 19:07
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 New blogpost is up for Let Thrones BewareToday's topic: Appendix N for this Modern Age. Inspiration Old and New This week, a look at some of the historical, fictional, and practical inspirations behind the development of Let Thrones Beware. Learn how poets, barbarians, and sword-fighting all contributed to this unique game. Appendix N for this Modern Age. Inspiration Old and New
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