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Thom and the Heads posted:Update re: my group of complete newbies + complete newbie DM posts from a few weeks ago Well we did the drat thing and it went better than I could have possibly imagined. We stuck with The Haunting - the one-shot campaign included in the Quick-Start Guide - though I made some small changes. All 4 of my players were super in to it from the jump and took to roleplaying pretty easily (3 of my players had never played an RPG, one had some brief experience playing D&D). We ended up with 4 distinct, interesting characters and watching my players put together their characters and weaving their backstories together was great. I loving LOVED DMing and seeing my players engage with (and sometimes break!) this story I had been reviewing and putting together for weeks was magical. I was able to throw in some creepy moments which were super effective and fun (one of the characters established that she loves eating egg salad sandwiches early on and in the lead up to the big fight, I had her hallucinate while eating one. She looked down and saw that the sandwich she was eating was full of crawling maggots). Towards the end of the game, I was briefly looking up some combat rules and my players were already talking about how they would totally be down for once a month sessions on Discord or Skype (I was up in NY visiting them so our future sessions would have to be remote) and I just looked up at them with the biggest, dumbest grin on my face. I had 4 people who had spent the previous few nights smoking/drinking completely enthralled for 5 hours - it was a highlight of the trip. Thanks thread!
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Jul 17, 2018 12:52
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Grats, sounds like a good time.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:16
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Kai Tave posted:This sounds like one of those ideas which could either be real clever or real tedious depending on the execution, how do they work? They are pretty simple. The art-free version of the PDF is PWYW, so I think it's ok to just link the rules. TNU also has pretty straight forward rules for establishing businesses, reducing the social standing of others, and getting driven out of down due to resentment.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:45
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Longest Game
Incomplete list of favourite games I've played:
Incomplete list of games I want to try:
Bad games:
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Jul 17, 2018 20:00
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Xiahou Dun posted:HP is just an enormous boring clock when you think about it. I've always hated how you can get massive success and then get hosed out of it by bad damage rolls. The total divorce of success and effect degree in D&D is just the fuckin' worst.
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Jul 17, 2018 21:51
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My workplace just set up a D&D channel and more people are interested in playing than we have GMs for. I hope I get a chance to rope them into Blades in the Dark or Fellowship 
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Jul 17, 2018 22:33
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spectralent posted:I've always hated how you can get massive success and then get hosed out of it by bad damage rolls. The total divorce of success and effect degree in D&D is just the fuckin' worst. normalizing damage expressions is pretty easy math AND speeds up play, as low-effort hacks go
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Jul 17, 2018 23:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:normalizing damage expressions is pretty easy math AND speeds up play, as low-effort hacks go Oh, yeah, it's just baffling we're like four decades into the game and it's still going "You know what'd be cool? If you can succeed by a huge margin and then do 1 hit point of damage!".
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Jul 17, 2018 23:52
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Static damage for attacks in d20 is a great idea. Even better is adding your margin of success to your damage rolls so that you get some randomization but it doesn't slow down gameplay.
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Jul 17, 2018 23:53
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If given the option to eliminate random damage or random chance to hit, I would eliminate random chance to hit. I like variables of damage a hell of a lot more than I like hit or miss.
remusclaw fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 00:20
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remusclaw posted:If given the option to eliminate random damage or random chance to hit, I would eliminate random chance to hit. 
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Jul 18, 2018 00:25
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Because there is a value in there being some randomness. Doubling up you chance of doing jack poo poo like D&D and it's imitators do it however, is not the way to do it.
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Jul 18, 2018 00:26
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i like the cut of your jib
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Jul 18, 2018 00:33
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remusclaw posted:Because there is a value in there being some randomness. Doubling up you chance of doing jack poo poo like D&D and it's imitators do it however, is not the way to do it. yes, but conversely there can be a different kind of value in removing chance in those particular instances I've played turn based computer games with set damage and no chance to miss that are fun in a different way
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Jul 18, 2018 00:35
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Positioning and tactical choice playing more of a part in combat due to certainty of damage sounds fun, but would likely require miniatures and battle mat even moreso than 4E does, and 4E does. Mobility would become the game, which does sound like something of a cool idea.
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Jul 18, 2018 00:39
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Posting here because there's not a general thread I can think of that would fit this: Is there a good actual play of Swords Without Master I can watch? I swear I've read these rules three times and it all sounds fascinating but I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the flow of the game.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:05
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starkebn posted:yes, but conversely there can be a different kind of value in removing chance in those particular instances Once again the discussion turns back to Into the Breach.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:34
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LuiCypher posted:
Shadowrun suffers real bad right now from the Harebrained games being just loving so much better then the tabletop game. It's like the opposite of what they probably wanted - the games are good enough that you don't want to play Shadowrun on tabletop. Also that entire franchise needs a drat reboot.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:37
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ProfessorCirno posted:Shadowrun suffers real bad right now from the Harebrained games being just loving so much better then the tabletop game. It's like the opposite of what they probably wanted - the games are good enough that you don't want to play Shadowrun on tabletop. This is 100% how I feel but have never managed to conceptualise.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:38
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One day someone will make good shadowrun and I'll enjoy it but overall I'll probably miss insulting it with no real knowledge or experience behind reading posts and listening to a podcast about one of the Monster Manuals.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:45
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Wrestlepig posted:One day someone will make good shadowrun and I'll enjoy it but overall I'll probably miss insulting it with no real knowledge or experience behind reading posts and listening to a podcast about one of the Monster Manuals. Someone make a Blades in the Dark hack for shadowrun tia.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:46
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kingcom posted:Someone make a Blades in the Dark hack for shadowrun tia. There are 3, I think!
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Jul 18, 2018 02:47
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Shadowrun suffers badly from an identity crisis. It tries to pretend that you can be down-and-out gang members on the streets fighting over territory, or strung-out crazy A-team mercs for hire, or highly professional deniable assets, or eco-terrorists, or a half dozen other things, and in trying to support all of that, fails to support any of it well. The setting is bloated the various subsystems don't play well together,
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Jul 18, 2018 02:48
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Honestly my conclusion after playing a substantial amount of Shadowrun is that I don't actually like the fantasy elements at all, and what I really want from a cyberpunk game is a game where equipment is both detailed and the primary method of defining characters' capabilities. I'm willing to bet most people who play Shadowrun are drawn in by a particular element or two, and would be better served by a game that supports those elements.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:51
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I genuinely really like the mishmash of magic and technology in Shadowrun and only wish it weren't specifically D&D-style fantasy and specifically cyberpunk as the main elements.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:54
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Mike Danger posted:Posting here because there's not a general thread I can think of that would fit this: Is there a good actual play of Swords Without Master I can watch? I swear I've read these rules three times and it all sounds fascinating but I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the flow of the game. One Shot did a three (?) part AP of it, here's the first one.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:56
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Xarbala posted:I genuinely really like the mishmash of magic and technology in Shadowrun and only wish it weren't specifically D&D-style fantasy and specifically cyberpunk as the main elements. I might like it if it interacted at all, but they're completely separate spheres, both mechanically and in-setting. In effect, it's just cyberpunk except one dude in robes can throw fireballs for some reason.
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Jul 18, 2018 02:59
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Subjunctive posted:There are 3, I think! copy pasting this from the bitd thread Serf posted:I like Karma in the Dark mostly because it has a good presentation and a really interesting spin on both Blades and Shadowrun, where your money is replaced by your karma and there is a defined end-of-game trigger where each player gets to commit a metacurrency towards changing the world. Then you're encouraged to make new characters of either the same crew (which is now a legacy organization) or a new crew. Its weird and interesting but also still pretty rough. I would absolutely play a blades hack because there is nothing more that I hate in games than players meticulously trying to form a plan that covers every single circumstance to avoid making rolls and taking risks. I'm in a cyberpunk 2020 game and there are points where my eyes glaze over and I mumble "engagement roll, flashbacks, equipment load" as a mantra. It probably won't happen since I'm always running stuff at a meetup and bitd isn't super-well suited to the one-shots I tend to handle. Maybe one day Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 03:16
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fool_of_sound posted:Honestly my conclusion after playing a substantial amount of Shadowrun is that I don't actually like the fantasy elements at all, and what I really want from a cyberpunk game is a game where equipment is both detailed and the primary method of defining characters' capabilities. I'm willing to bet most people who play Shadowrun are drawn in by a particular element or two, and would be better served by a game that supports those elements. See, I'm honestly the opposite. The idea of your rough and tough and rowdy cyberpunk characters from the gutters and ghettos would be defined by their corporate candy just rankles me. It's a view of cyberpunk I've always disliked - the huge assumption that of course your characters and game is all about working within the system and cozying up with the corps.
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Jul 18, 2018 05:07
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Honestly while Cyberpunk is a genre that's one of my favorites from an aesthetic point, I'll admit I loving despise most of the themes the genre runs on, if mostly because I find they are too close to reality for my liking and it ends up making me get depressed, as I want my fiction to take me away from the real world's problems, not remind me of them There's some exceptions to this like Transmetropolitan for example
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Jul 18, 2018 05:42
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ProfessorCirno posted:See, I'm honestly the opposite. The idea of your rough and tough and rowdy cyberpunk characters from the gutters and ghettos would be defined by their corporate candy just rankles me. It's a view of cyberpunk I've always disliked - the huge assumption that of course your characters and game is all about working within the system and cozying up with the corps. I really feel like the dehumanizing aspect of tech-as-power-source is core to cyberpunk. YOU genuinely aren't anyone special. Nobody is. Tech is so advanced that it's all that matters. The chips in your head are better than any education, cyberarms beat hitting the gym, your gun can aim better than you can, you sure as hell can't hack without a top of the line system.
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Jul 18, 2018 05:46
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Kai Tave posted:Once again the discussion turns back to Into the Breach. that too, but I was thinking Card Hunter
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Jul 18, 2018 05:55
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fool_of_sound posted:I really feel like the dehumanizing aspect of tech-as-power-source is core to cyberpunk. YOU genuinely aren't anyone special. Nobody is. Tech is so advanced that it's all that matters. The chips in your head are better than any education, cyberarms beat hitting the gym, your gun can aim better than you can, you sure as hell can't hack without a top of the line system. Shadowrun has a whole class of guys that can.
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Jul 18, 2018 06:51
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theironjef posted:Shadowrun has a whole class of guys that can. Yeah which is one of the major features I dislike about the setting, as stated previously.
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Jul 18, 2018 06:57
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fool_of_sound posted:I really feel like the dehumanizing aspect of tech-as-power-source is core to cyberpunk. YOU genuinely aren't anyone special. Nobody is. Tech is so advanced that it's all that matters. The chips in your head are better than any education, cyberarms beat hitting the gym, your gun can aim better than you can, you sure as hell can't hack without a top of the line system. That is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about when I was talking about how I hate the themes of cyberpunk
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Jul 18, 2018 07:02
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drrockso20 posted:That is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about when I was talking about how I hate the themes of cyberpunk Yeah, the themes of cyberpunk aren't pleasant. It certainly not an escapist genre. The core fantasy of the cyberpunk character is that of the clever and ruthless underdog.
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Jul 18, 2018 07:05
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fool_of_sound posted:Yeah, the themes of cyberpunk aren't pleasant. It certainly not an escapist genre. The core fantasy of the cyberpunk character is that of the clever and ruthless underdog. Would definitely like some stuff that uses the cyberpunk aesthetic, but without the themes of it
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Jul 18, 2018 07:19
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drrockso20 posted:Would definitely like some stuff that uses the cyberpunk aesthetic, but without the themes of it So unfortunately thats kind of the point of cyberpunk. The entire thesis statement of the genre is that the technological revolution that is coming isn't going to save us from our social issues. Its going to make them worse. I'm not sure how you do the aesthetic without it being a consequence of rapidly growing inequality. I mean, if you dont want the themes you are basically just doing Steampunk. EDIT: Maybe thats why sci-fi games are such a hard sell to get people to play. Sci Fi often has a definitive answer its trying to present. EDIT2: Also the thing that makes cyberpunk amazing to play in is not that the world is a good place, its that can try to smash the loving system with your cyber arms. kingcom fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 07:29
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Arguably Shadowrun is the aesthetics of cyberpunk without the themes as Shadowrun is primarily focused on the loop of doing crimes for money more than anything else. A lot of the CP2020 table stories I've heard over the years seem to go down the Grand Theft Auto route as well.kingcom posted:So unfortunately thats kind of the point of cyberpunk. The entire thesis statement of the genre is that the technological revolution that is coming isn't going to save us from our social issues. Its going to make them worse. Or just generic sci-fi, because you don't really get cyberpunk without some measure of stark dystopia. At that point all you've got is people with robot arms and bad fashion sense.
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Jul 18, 2018 07:39
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Kai Tave posted:Or just generic sci-fi, because you don't really get cyberpunk without some measure of stark dystopia. At that point all you've got is people with robot arms and bad fashion sense. You can have socialist utopia ala Star Trek my dude.
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Jul 18, 2018 07:41
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