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fuzzy_logic posted:your character needs to have a secret that is known to the DM but not the other players*. Don't let this put you off, it's a brilliant thing for good DMs to hook characters in and give everyone an arc. 13th Age kinda has this (called One Unique Thing) in its character creation rules and a good DM can spin it well.
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May 14, 2018 14:31
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There has to be a list of red flags before joining a game. It feels like "This is a setting with almost no magic, have a really good excuse if you want a magic character" is one of them since it always seems to precede "This is a gritty, realistic fantasy game" which in turn precedes "Roll to see if you get raped by the bandits."
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May 14, 2018 14:36
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I ran a session of DnD 5e over the weekend for some friends, some of whom had long histories with pnp rpgs, some of whom had almost none. As a result, rather than run the game in a DnD-specific setting, I told them we'd be doing a Star Wars pastiche. Reskin the crossbows as blaster rifles, the half-orcs as wookie type aliens, etc. We ended up with an interesting crew: a dwarf cleric based on Kenny Powers and a wood elf druid as our 'jedi,' a wookie-type barbarian and an assassin droid. Their mission was a deliberate remix of the premise for the start of The Phantom Menace: a star system at the edge of the galaxy has recently cut all communication or physical traffic with the rest of the galaxy. Go there, find out what's up, resolve it if possible. The actual game session played like a mashup of Star Wars and The Expanse. I didn't want to use conventional battle maps for this game, partly because no one had a good erasable mat, but made a solar system map out of dice: scatter dice from Warhammer as the star and the point where the players' ship translated into the system, D6s for the inner planets, d10s for the outer planets. Their ship was represented by a D10, with the understanding that it had 10 points of shields and 10 points of hull, rolling d10 for damage against other vessels. They fought another vessel, an equivalent d10 ship that'd been lying in wait in the outer planets, preying on ships undertaking the same mission as the PCs. In combat a character on each of the contending ships rolled Initiative for their side. The combat round for a ship was largely the same as for a single character: they could move, attack, and take a miscellaneous action (ability checks and spells usually), in whatever order. A different character volunteers for each role at the start of a combat round. So we had the druid running the weapons, the wookie working in engineering, and the cleric casting buffs. The droid, however, took advantage of an option i made clear at the start of combat: as many players as cared to could launch from their ship in fighters to go Rogue Squadron it up. This is what the assassin droid did, and managed a clutch ambush strike on the enemy vessel at a point in the fight where things looked very grim for the PCs' ship. When both vessels' shields were down the enemy ship initiated a boarding action, which switched us into conventional DnD footwork. In the end the PCs managed to overcome the boarding action and counterattack, seizing the enemy ship, though the assassin droid took nearly crippling damage in the process. The game was meant to be run as a one-shot that would be satisfying whether or not the party completed the whole mission in a single sitting. We wrapped after that space battle, but without resolving the central questions of the mission, and the players asked me to run this particular game again, to complete the story, next time we all gather. I think the rough, simple space combat minigame I made up for that one-shot could scale up and out in a lot of interesting ways though, and would translate well to a digital format like Roll20 hex maps. Mostly of course it was fun to get a little drunk and high and play pretend with old friends.
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May 14, 2018 15:03
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chitoryu12 posted:There has to be a list of red flags before joining a game. It feels like "This is a setting with almost no magic, have a really good excuse if you want a magic character" is one of them since it always seems to precede "This is a gritty, realistic fantasy game" which in turn precedes "Roll to see if you get raped by the bandits." Other huge red flags for me: "I have a custom [skill/magic/other massive chunk of the system] system for my game!" 999/1000 times it's terrible, usually overcomplicated to no gain. "I require N pages of backstory" I'm not going to write you a novel just to play your game. This seems to be a big thing with lovely WoD games. "No OOC talk ever!" I know where this rule comes from, but the solution is to be a more interesting DM, not banning table-talk.
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May 14, 2018 16:45
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A big red flag for me is time travel and parallel universe hopping. For some reason, this became a fad in my FLGS-based community. It hasn't presaged anything creepy, it's just that I have seen multiple games go sideways because the GM decided that the World of Darkness needed to be Chrono Trigger, or have the Lovecraft mythos crammed into it. I'm probably preaching to the choir when I tell you all that the style and themes of a game quickly get lost when it's treated as one corner of a Marvel/DC sort of shared multiverse.
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May 14, 2018 17:06
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Yawgmoth posted:Other huge red flags for me: "I have a custom [skill/magic/other massive chunk of the system] system for my game!" 999/1000 times it's terrible, usually overcomplicated to no gain. How far is too far for it? I was going to try and make a system for determining silver bullet damage in my monster hunter game based on the caliber of the rounds used, so there would be a reason for hunters to be carrying around hand cannons like the LAR Grizzly or Desert Eagle.
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May 14, 2018 17:29
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chitoryu12 posted:How far is too far for it? I was going to try and make a system for determining silver bullet damage in my monster hunter game based on the caliber of the rounds used, so there would be a reason for hunters to be carrying around hand cannons like the LAR Grizzly or Desert Eagle. Why do you want a reason for them to carry those around, to the extent that you create a mechanical system to encourage it?
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May 14, 2018 17:32
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Subjunctive posted:Why do you want a reason for them to carry those around, to the extent that you create a mechanical system to encourage it? Because big fancy guns like 1911s and .44 Magnum revolvers and .45-70 lever-action rifles are cool.
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May 14, 2018 17:40
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chitoryu12 posted:Because big fancy guns like 1911s and .44 Magnum revolvers and .45-70 lever-action rifles are cool. Just make them do more damage, or some other useful perk.
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May 14, 2018 17:43
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Angrymog posted:Just make them do more damage, or some other useful perk. It's GURPS, so the system already has a built-in method of adding damage to guns based on caliber (like .40 and .45 caliber weapons get the large piercing modifier for 1.5x damage after armor/cover penetration, and hollow points bring the damage up to the next largest type of piercing damage so you can put a 9mm on par with a .45 by loading it with JHP). What I'm adding to it is a way to add damage from silver bullets for monster hunting, with larger calibers getting a larger amount of silver and thus higher poison-esque damage. Depending on the monster, the silver may be the only source of damage and they're immune to the rest of the gunshot damage. I also want to structure each hunt around researching the particular threat so the players can learn its weaknesses and tailor their approach to it, like bringing rock salt shotshells for ghost hunting or acquiring bronze slugs to take out a monster of Mediterranean origin. Something like a cross between Supernatural and The Witcher 3.
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May 14, 2018 17:57
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chitoryu12 posted:It's GURPS, so the system already has a built-in method of adding damage to guns based on caliber (like .40 and .45 caliber weapons get the large piercing modifier for 1.5x damage after armor/cover penetration, and hollow points bring the damage up to the next largest type of piercing damage so you can put a 9mm on par with a .45 by loading it with JHP). What I'm adding to it is a way to add damage from silver bullets for monster hunting, with larger calibers getting a larger amount of silver and thus higher poison-esque damage. Depending on the monster, the silver may be the only source of damage and they're immune to the rest of the gunshot damage. Additional damage die of a type? Like, your small babby bullets do an extra 1d4 silver, but your big burly hand cannon does an extra d8 silver?
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May 14, 2018 18:15
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I wonder how much the popularity of GoT over the last few years has increased the "low magic gritty rape & murder" games.
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May 14, 2018 19:11
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I dunno about all the rapey bullshit, but I do likes me some low-magic, gritty settings. I've used Columbia Games' Harn setting since the 1980's. But in that setting, "gritty" generally means something more along the lines of, "yeah, you can carve some people up in combat, but just be aware that if you get wounded you might actually die of sepsis." Another thing I dig about low-fantasy settings is that the opposition is usually social/political/religious in nature rather than racial/demonic/undead. I dig it when the forces against which the players are fighting are relatable rather than 2-dimensional, mustache-twirling baddies. I mean, you can fight orcs in Harn, but why go to all that trouble when the Sherriff of Meselynshire is already such an rear end in a top hat?
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May 14, 2018 19:28
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the_steve posted:Additional damage die of a type? That’s what I was thinking, just trying to come up with an appropriate scale for it. GURPS exclusively uses d6. Like with standard ball ammo and barrel length, a 9mm pistol is 2d+1 and a .45 ACP pistol is 2d.
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May 14, 2018 19:30
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Ilor posted:I dunno about all the rapey bullshit, but I do likes me some low-magic, gritty settings. I've used Columbia Games' Harn setting since the 1980's. But in that setting, "gritty" generally means something more along the lines of, "yeah, you can carve some people up in combat, but just be aware that if you get wounded you might actually die of sepsis." Another thing I dig about low-fantasy settings is that the opposition is usually social/political/religious in nature rather than racial/demonic/undead. I dig it when the forces against which the players are fighting are relatable rather than 2-dimensional, mustache-twirling baddies. I mean, you can fight orcs in Harn, but why go to all that trouble when the Sherriff of Meselynshire is already such an rear end in a top hat? Harn is a great setting. But I cannot imagine using its rules, at least not without having a psychotic break. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:44 on May 14, 2018 |
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May 14, 2018 19:42
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chitoryu12 posted:It's GURPS, so the system already has a built-in method of adding damage to guns based on caliber (like .40 and .45 caliber weapons get the large piercing modifier for 1.5x damage after armor/cover penetration, and hollow points bring the damage up to the next largest type of piercing damage so you can put a 9mm on par with a .45 by loading it with JHP). What I'm adding to it is a way to add damage from silver bullets for monster hunting, with larger calibers getting a larger amount of silver and thus higher poison-esque damage. Depending on the monster, the silver may be the only source of damage and they're immune to the rest of the gunshot damage. There exists a Hellboy GURPS book, and what you are describing is the BPRD. I have no idea if the Hellboy GURPS book actually delivers this, but it's where you should get that kind of thing if it's done well.
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May 14, 2018 19:46
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Joe Slowboat posted:There exists a Hellboy GURPS book, and what you are describing is the BPRD. I have no idea if the Hellboy GURPS book actually delivers this, but it's where you should get that kind of thing if it's done well. Thanks, I didn't know about that book! It's definitely closer to Witcher and Supernatural in feel because it has the modern road trip aspects of the latter with the investigation style and anti-monster preparation of the former. The hunters are a loose-knit independent group of people "in the know" who often use grift and theft to acquire money and important supplies because their entire job is based around committing crimes. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 19:56 on May 14, 2018 |
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May 14, 2018 19:54
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Yawgmoth posted:"this is a low-magic game" in D&D is always an immediate Abandon Ship for me. The system just assumes that you're gonna have X gear at Y level, that at least one party member is a spellcaster of some stripe, and that through one of those you'll have some type of healing beyond the piddly amount you get naturally. I think in this DM's case he was genuinely not super experienced with the edition he was running and couldn't be arsed to learn the magic rules / was concerned about being stampeded by players like Toby who knew more about the setting/edition than he did. This may have been the reason for some of the homebrewing too. It didn't work.
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May 14, 2018 20:45
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Regarding hunter games, you may also want to look into Hunter: The Vigil from the Chronicles of Darkness line, for various monster hunting game ideas and mechanics.
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May 14, 2018 20:52
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I've been lucky to never have been in a rape game. Usually, if someone tells me it's a no/low magic game, it means they have a DMPC who is Super Saiyan Gandalf while the rest of us are armed with sharp sticks and not allowed to be good at anything.
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May 14, 2018 21:07
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Common references for gritty low fantasy include things like the Elric saga, where magic is technically rare, but the series focuses entirely on an extremely magic dude and his magic adventures with gods and stuff. Meanwhile Middle-Earth is the source that every high fantasy D&D setting rips off, but magic is no more or less present in the lives of ordinary people than in Moorcock's Young Kingdoms. So a lot of this comes down to weird personal definitions that are shown to be ill-considered and inconsistent when they play out in a campaign.
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May 14, 2018 21:17
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Halloween Jack posted:Harn is a great setting. But I cannot imagine using its rules, at least not without having a psychotic break.
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May 14, 2018 21:28
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Halloween Jack posted:Common references for gritty low fantasy include things like the Elric saga, where magic is technically rare, but the series focuses entirely on an extremely magic dude and his magic adventures with gods and stuff. Meanwhile Middle-Earth is the source that every high fantasy D&D setting rips off, but magic is no more or less present in the lives of ordinary people than in Moorcock's Young Kingdoms. So a lot of this comes down to weird personal definitions that are shown to be ill-considered and inconsistent when they play out in a campaign. Middle Earth is a weird case for magic, because it is very different from pretty much any game setting (especially D&D). In Middle Earth there is basically no difference between "magic" and "being really good at making/doing stuff". Using Athelas to heal is magic, because the knowledge of how to do so is rare and valuable. Creating magic rings is just being really really good at making rings, "weaving spells" while making stuff is almost always used to mean knowing the material and methods so well that you can achieve magical results. Every elf and hundreds of dwarves and men can use magic, because they are learned in their craft or folk-ways. One Ring is the best Middle Earth game because it actually uses this system, by allowing anyone wise enough to learn the ways use magic while also keeping magic very low key and subtle.
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May 14, 2018 21:28
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the_steve posted:I've been lucky to never have been in a rape game. Usually, if someone tells me it's a no/low magic game, it means they have a DMPC who is Super Saiyan Gandalf while the rest of us are armed with sharp sticks and not allowed to be good at anything. My one low magic campaign turned out to be "No magic except for Psionics" which turned out to be a moot point as we got into the 2 hour long combat with an iron golem when only one person could damage it.
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May 14, 2018 21:29
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chitoryu12 posted:How far is too far for it? I was going to try and make a system for determining silver bullet damage in my monster hunter game based on the caliber of the rounds used, so there would be a reason for hunters to be carrying around hand cannons like the LAR Grizzly or Desert Eagle. fuzzy_logic posted:I think in this DM's case he was genuinely not super experienced with the edition he was running and couldn't be arsed to learn the magic rules / was concerned about being stampeded by players like Toby who knew more about the setting/edition than he did. This may have been the reason for some of the homebrewing too. It didn't work.
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May 14, 2018 21:31
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Yawgmoth posted:A houserule needs to improve upon the game, either by streamlining something that is too granular to matter or by expanding on something that needs to be explored in more depth. In the latter case, you have to be absolutely sure that (a) the game needs this, and (b) what you're adding actually functions in a manner other than "adds more fiddly bullshit". There's very little to gain from adding more skills to 3.5e D&D, for example. Unfortunately, most houserules only seek to pile extra poo poo onto the landfill. I think mine would pass muster in that case, since a big part of the setting is monsters being immune to anything except specific weakness like silver, bronze, brass, consecrated iron, salt, etc. and it makes logical sense that more silver would mean more damage.
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May 14, 2018 21:36
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chitoryu12 posted:I think mine would pass muster in that case, since a big part of the setting is monsters being immune to anything except specific weakness like silver, bronze, brass, consecrated iron, salt, etc. and it makes logical sense that more silver would mean more damage. When you put it that way, then maybe no bonus damage at all? I mean, if you have to have Silver to do any damage to it at all, then, the damage die itself should probably be the only one doing the talking, at which point, we're back to the "Goes without saying" that Bigger Guns = Bigger damage die.
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May 14, 2018 21:56
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chitoryu12 posted:I think mine would pass muster in that case, since a big part of the setting is monsters being immune to anything except specific weakness like silver, bronze, brass, consecrated iron, salt, etc. and it makes logical sense that more silver would mean more damage. is this related to your MHI LR thread? I'm worried about you mang
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May 14, 2018 22:35
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the_steve posted:When you put it that way, then maybe no bonus damage at all? The way GURPS works is that damage is basically penetration, while damage modifiers like the caliber of the bullet or anything like poison on it are applied after damage gets through the armor, cover, or any other DR. So like a 9mm pistol has damage of 2d+2 piercing. Regular piercing damage gets no modifier after penetrating, so let's say you're shooting someone wearing a vest that provides a DR of 5 against piercing damage. You roll 11 damage total, then subtract 5 for the armor, so you deal 6 damage to the target (not getting into any grittier rules about armor degradation). Meanwhile, a .45 ACP pistol has damage of 2d large piercing. Large piercing damage gets a 1.5x damage bonus after penetration, so against the same target we rolled 8 damage. Subtract 5 for the armor for 3 damage, multiply by 1.5 (dropping fractions) for 4 damage against the target. What silver and other vulnerable elements would do is act as an additional damage type dealt, acting as a sort of supernatural poisoning effect that can deal damage over time and get a multiplier if you hit the vitals or the head. The raw damage of the gun itself still determines if you penetrate the target, so some monsters like a Wendigo may have natural DR that requires more powerful rounds to punch through their tough skin. It would also affect things like shooting through cover, since DR is additive. Where size comes into play is emphasizing the use of high-caliber weapons, as a .45 caliber bullet can hold more silver than a .25 caliber and thus deal more damage to supernatural targets. It adds a bit more of a balancing act to choosing weapons because high-caliber guns tend to have more recoil and lower capacity, and higher penetration with a higher caliber means even more recoil to the point where you may be suffering a strength penalty to try and use the biggest gun you can find. Ichabod Sexbeast posted:is this related to your MHI LR thread? Oh no, I've actually had this in the works for a few years now. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 22:39 on May 14, 2018 |
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May 14, 2018 22:36
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Kurieg posted:My one low magic campaign turned out to be "No magic except for Psionics" which turned out to be a moot point as we got into the 2 hour long combat with an iron golem when only one person could damage it. This is why low-magic and D&D is a 'jump ship'. So many enemies are designed to be either only take full damage by or can only be damaged at all by magic of some sort - spells, enchanted weapons, etc., and most GMs don't take the time to prune the MM to take out enemies like the aforementioned Iron Golem or otherwise balance the combat for this.
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May 14, 2018 22:49
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Robindaybird posted:This is why low-magic and D&D is a 'jump ship'. So many enemies are designed to either be damaged by magic of some sort - spells, enchanted weapons, etc., and most GMs don't take the time to prune the MM to take out enemies like the aforementioned Iron Golem or otherwise balance the combat for this. Luckily he was a good DM and realized afterwards that it was a giant mistake and it became a running joke in our games thereafter. But what he had intended as "I like Psionics I will force everyone else to use psionics" turned out badly since absolutely none of us wanted to engage with 3.0's "I'm MAD as hell and not going to take it anymore" take on the Psion. and found other classes to play.
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May 14, 2018 22:51
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And as the infamous RapeWorld campaign saw, it's really easy for a lovely DM to forget the "almost no magic" setting and start throwing in magic when he talks himself into a corner and needs to railroad, making it seem more like the PCs are low-magic and everyone else is fine.
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May 14, 2018 22:52
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Kurieg posted:Luckily he was a good DM and realized afterwards that it was a giant mistake and it became a running joke in our games thereafter. But what he had intended as "I like Psionics I will force everyone else to use psionics" turned out badly since absolutely none of us wanted to engage with 3.0's "I'm MAD as hell and not going to take it anymore" take on the Psion. and found other classes to play. Has any edition of psionics been worth it to play? My understanding whenever I looked at them is they end up being horribly balanced in some way, and that one might as well play a wizard of some stripe instead.
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May 15, 2018 00:41
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3.5 psionics were at the least decent and a drat sight better than Vancian casting. 4E psionics were a bit wonky due to being experimental but also good. (If not quite so powerful as fighter or wizard simply due to the relative weight of splatbooks.)
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May 15, 2018 00:56
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Robindaybird posted:This is why low-magic and D&D is a 'jump ship'. So many enemies are designed to be either only take full damage by or can only be damaged at all by magic of some sort - spells, enchanted weapons, etc., and most GMs don't take the time to prune the MM to take out enemies like the aforementioned Iron Golem or otherwise balance the combat for this.
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May 15, 2018 01:05
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3.0 Psionics were the weird "you need to have a high strength to cast X Psion spells, high Con to cast Y Psion spells, etc.". 3.5 changed Psions to pure int based casters. then Complete Psionics nerfed some of their spells and introduced two new classes, one of which is meh, and the other which might actively be worse than the Warrior class.
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May 15, 2018 01:32
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I liked the concept they were aiming at with 3.0 psionics, where you could have a muscle wizard and sort of force specialization without forcing it, but good lord did they ever miss the mark.
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May 15, 2018 02:25
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Kurieg posted:3.0 Psionics were the weird "you need to have a high strength to cast X Psion spells, high Con to cast Y Psion spells, etc.". 3.5 changed Psions to pure int based casters. then Complete Psionics nerfed some of their spells and introduced two new classes, one of which is meh, and the other which might actively be worse than the Warrior class. Oh okay that makes more sense. 3.5 Psions are basically just Sorcerers with a different resource system so I was kind of confused there.
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May 15, 2018 02:50
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CannonFodder posted:Yeah, D&D isn't a good fit for low-magic games. That's why Conan The Barbarian role playing games exist. What's a good game along those lines?
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May 15, 2018 02:57
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the_steve posted:I've been lucky to never have been in a rape game. Usually, if someone tells me it's a no/low magic game, it means they have a DMPC who is Super Saiyan Gandalf while the rest of us are armed with sharp sticks and not allowed to be good at anything. We never had a rape game. (A couple of crossbow weddings though.) I had a chain of combined tavern/brothels in any campaign where I suspect there would be sexual malfeasance. Also, my bouncers don't care WHAT you WERE, but, now you got their attention, you are now chiseled spam. Period.
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