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Enjoy posted:I love Monty Python so I was really happy when my team got to watch Life of Brian during PDXCON due to fans wandering around disrupting things. Then the "I want to be a woman" scene came on. The woman I sit next to is trans. I've never felt so awkward and embarrassed in my life what's hosed is that for the longest time that's as close as a sympathetic trans character mainstream media had.
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Aug 26, 2018 22:26
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:what's hosed is that for the longest time that's as close as a sympathetic trans character mainstream media had. There's Leon Shermer in Dog Day Afternoon.
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Aug 26, 2018 23:16
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Y'all;
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Aug 26, 2018 23:27
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Slimnoid posted:I got one hell of a Wraith motherload earlier last week: Getting the Shadow Players Guide intact is awesome because it’s a great book and had notoriously bad binding in some printings. Mine literally came apart during my first reading.
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Aug 26, 2018 23:51
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Meinberg posted:Getting the Shadow Players Guide intact is awesome because it’s a great book and had notoriously bad binding in some printings. Mine literally came apart during my first reading. It also used to be really hard to come by, going for as much as $50 online, before becoming widely available as a PDF.
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Aug 27, 2018 00:23
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Slimnoid posted:Especially since I got all of this for free. Holy poo poo, that's a great haul. I'm still missing some of those guildbooks and I've been working on the set for years now.
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Aug 27, 2018 00:33
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moths posted:Holy poo poo, that's a great haul. I'm still missing some of those guildbooks and I've been working on the set for years now. Yeah, I got really lucky. It's a pretty massive pile once I stack it up like this. 
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Aug 27, 2018 03:30
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Wow. Even the Guildbooks' spines are nice. Those get dinged up in a light breeze.
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Aug 27, 2018 03:42
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Slimnoid posted:Yeah, I got really lucky. It's a pretty massive pile once I stack it up like this. I'm missing so many of those. I'm mad jelly.
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Aug 27, 2018 03:55
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Nessus posted:You're probably best served just writing it up and putting it on DTRPG but GURPS is relatively well known for their setting books; even now, while the INternet has gotten usable enough to obviate the need, they tend to be better than many basic textbooks. I really can't tell how much RPG self publishing is just pissing into an ocean of piss and I'm not sure how to draw awareness to anything I self publish aside from asking y'all to read it and tell me nice things about it. Like the reason I don't have an actual career in writing is because editors expect writers to also be promoters and that's just beyond my capabilites.
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Aug 27, 2018 03:58
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:I really can't tell how much RPG self publishing is just pissing into an ocean of piss and I'm not sure how to draw awareness to anything I self publish aside from asking y'all to read it and tell me nice things about it. Like the reason I don't have an actual career in writing is because editors expect writers to also be promoters and that's just beyond my capabilites.
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Aug 27, 2018 04:10
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What's that, Shadow? Kill Slimnoid, steal his skin, and take his books?
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Aug 27, 2018 06:54
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is there a set of like rough synopses out there for each owod line and its metaplot bullshit
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Aug 27, 2018 12:50
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Beckett's Jyhad Diary is a really solid read for V20 (and even to some extent for V20 DA). I've been reading the PDF on and off over the past week and it does a great job of providing fluff and chronicle hooks.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:37
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So my Vampire LARP that turned into a Changeling LARP is now an Accord LARP and after like 12 years of owning the book and never playing it, I'm finally getting to play a Promethean. 2nd edition has made it a lot more playable. After shrugging off a full magazine from a submachine gun and hurling a table at someone with a pool of 21 I'm thinking "everyone loving hates you eventually and you blight the very landscape around you" is a more than fair drawback and frankly I really like playing such a tragic character. He doesn't want to hurt anyone and all he wants to do is help, why do you hate me so, little Changeling friend? 
FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 16:50
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FrostyPox posted:hurling a table at someone with a pool of 21 This reminds me: can you actually apply Residual Memories dice to combat rolls? I just... kind of assumed you couldn't, and can't really remember what made me think that.
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Aug 27, 2018 17:32
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FrostyPox posted:So my Vampire LARP that turned into a Changeling LARP is now an Accord LARP and after like 12 years of owning the book and never playing it, I'm finally getting to play a Promethean. 2nd edition has made it a lot more playable. Quiet, Solomon Grundy.
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Aug 27, 2018 17:36
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This reminds me: can you actually apply Residual Memories dice to combat rolls? I actually don't know. I'm just gonna break down and buy a physical copy of the book because I have the soul of an 80 year old and hate reading PDFs so my grasp of my own rules is not the best (I thought i had to spend Pyros to add my Azoth to my Strength for that one Ferrum Alembic, but nope!). Also unsurprisingly it appears another Goon is in my LARP but I was unaware of this fact 
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Aug 27, 2018 18:17
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I've never been clear if you can 'overcharge' the Arc alembic past 3 pyros to get a 'weapon' larger than 3L or not.
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Aug 28, 2018 03:42
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FrostyPox posted:Also unsurprisingly it appears another Goon is in my LARP but I was unaware of this fact I'm not in any LARPs, it's just that there are only so many ways a Promethean gets a 20+ die pool.
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Aug 28, 2018 03:52
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm not in any LARPs, it's just that there are only so many ways a Promethean gets a 20+ die pool. Well, no, my character's name is, in fact, Solomon Grundy so I probably know LifeGetsWorser IRL! The way I got the huge dicepool was getting two successes on Titan's Throw which allows you you to triple your strength, my Strength was 4 + 2 for my Azoth for that Ferrum Alembic, and I had 3 Athletics. FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 04:46
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FrostyPox posted:So my Vampire LARP that turned into a Changeling LARP is now an Accord LARP and after like 12 years of owning the book and never playing it, I'm finally getting to play a Promethean. 2nd edition has made it a lot more playable. Accord?! Who's still running that?
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Aug 28, 2018 05:27
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Pope Guilty posted:Accord?! Who's still running that? It's not the Cam thing, we just stole the name. Because we're completely unoriginal.
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Aug 28, 2018 06:03
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Yeah it's basically the Super(natural) Friends. A Changeling, two Vampires, and a Promethean walk into a
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Aug 28, 2018 13:24
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So am I missing something, or does VtM 5E's chargen system do a really impressive job of keeping up XP parity between different choices until the very end when you choose your predator style and just get a free discipline dot with no regards for what disciplines you've already bought?
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Aug 28, 2018 16:16
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So the preparations for my Road To Jerusalem-inspired dark ages hunter game are progressing apace. I decided to write up a bunch of new fighting style merits to give my characters an edge against the monsters without giving them actual supernatural powers, but I'm not sure if they work. I'd like to post an example here, tell me what you think? Danish/Gautic Fighting: Shieldwall(*): The easiest way to survive an early medieval clusterfuck. As long as two or more members of the coterie have bought this technique and carry a shield, they may receive an extra +1 to their defense rating. Note that this does not cost an action. Reckless Strike(**): An untrained fighter’s technique, that remains quite effective and the reason norse fighters are feared: The fearless frontal attack with a weapon held in two hands. If the character uses a 2H weapon or a 1H weapon clutched in both hands, they may use Reckless Strike. After the to-hit roll is made, a test against Willpower+Weaponry is made. If succesfull, the attack causes +1 level of automatic damage and if it kills or incapacitates, may cause enemies to panic at the STs discretion. Can only be used once per scene. Shield Bash(***): A common technique in this area, the shield bash is a means to relocate an opponent, as well as stun them if lucky. The character must attack with their shield instead of their weapon to use this technique, only causing the damage value of the shield. Then a resisted challenge between the users Strength+Brawl and the victims Stamina+Dodge is made. A success allows the character to move their opponent half a metre per net success, to a place of their choosing. On an exceptional success, the victim is stunned and suffers -1 to all rolls until able to rest. Forceful Strike (****): An experienced norse fighter can attack with their hand weapon while putting their body weight into the strike, bypassing some or all of their victims protection. Can be used twice per scene, and every two hits on the attack rolls subtracts one from the targets armor rating, if any. Combat Master (*****): Elder geats seem to be impossible to phaze in combat, ducking and weaving away from any number of attacks! Neither during regular defense or dodge actions are their Defense or Dodge scores decreased by multiple attackers. Tias fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 16:56
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Hard to comment on it when the rules system you're using is very unclear. Some kind of homebrew hybrid of WoD and CofD rules? WoD traits, success thresholds, and rolled defenses, but CofD style merits and exceptional successes? At a glance though, first three levels look pretty underwhelming and limited (a 3-success roll of a WoD Virtue + Ability necessary for Reckless Strike to do anything special, and all it yields is 1 damage and an "at the ST's discretion?" Any attack can cause enemies to panic "at the ST's discretion," it doesn't sound very certain), the fourth level doesn't appear to have actual mechanics?, and the fifth level looks pretty good for where it is.
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Aug 28, 2018 18:18
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Ack, still getting used to this system  No, it's supposed to be purely nWoD with some converted dark age traits and enemies. I'll try to go over it with my WoD core rulebook again now. Reckless strike, well, my intent was for any succesful use to rout untrained or militia opponents unless they outnumber the coterie considerably or have a supernatural ally goading them on. E: hosed around with it, how does it look now? Tias fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 18:48
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Tias posted:Ack, still getting used to this system Reckless Strike is hilariously overcomplicated. For one, there's already rules for a reckless offensive - an all-out attack, where you forgo defense for the turn to get an attack bonus. I want to say +3 to the roll? You could then tie into that to automatically apply the Beaten Down tilt if the attack causes a wound penalty. Further, extra successes on the attack roll already do their thing in getting past armor by, y'know, straight up adding damage. Having them also reduce Armor is really weird. You also seem to really like resisted rolls, which are usually not something that nWoD likes to pull out for non-magical stuff, and especially not as a rider on an attack roll already having to hit, because it slows things down immensely. e: like, it's okay for stuff to just happen without an extra roll required.
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Aug 28, 2018 19:03
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Gotchu, thanks. As you may be able to guess, I'm a crusty bag of old who has played Masquerade and not much else for nearly 20 years  I'll post a revised edition a little later, any and all feedback still welcome.
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Aug 28, 2018 19:08
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Tias posted:No, it's supposed to be purely nWoD with some converted dark age traits and enemies. I'll try to go over it with my WoD core rulebook again now. Willpower typically isn't rolled as a single trait in nWoD; relevant dice pools roll Resolve + Composure. I mention this mostly to highlight that you actually wrote an unusually large dice pool there, two Attributes plus a Skill. That's not a thing you can't do in nWoD, but you should be conscious when you do it, and it's relatively uncommon for mortal hunters. Important nWoD balance point: nWoD dice pools do not gradate by number of successes well. Combat damage is an exception, not the rule; the majority of rolls should stick to only caring if you rolled no successes, at least one success, or at least five successes. That's because the default target number 8 for a "hit" is steep and swingy. Just give a successful shield bash a half-meter or a meter. There is no Dodge Skill. Thoughts off the top of my head for Forceful Strike: either ignore a point of general Armor when (spending Willpower on attacking / making an all-out attack), or sacrifice Defense to ignore all Armor. Or to ignore your weapon rating in Armor, maybe. You're really only going to be dealing with three effective levels of Armor: "basically none," "a few points," and "giant fuckoff wall of magic" (a.k.a. "you shouldn't fight this guy head on like this"). So aim for comfortably bypassing the first two categories.
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Aug 28, 2018 20:20
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I Am Just a Box posted:Willpower typically isn't rolled as a single trait in nWoD; relevant dice pools roll Resolve + Composure. I mention this mostly to highlight that you actually wrote an unusually large dice pool there, two Attributes plus a Skill. That's not a thing you can't do in nWoD, but you should be conscious when you do it, and it's relatively uncommon for mortal hunters. Are there any examples of that? The only dice pools I've seen that aren't Attribute + Skill or Attribute + Attribute involve power traits and/or supernatural abilities like Discipline ratings, but then I've not ventured far beyond the core material.
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Aug 28, 2018 20:34
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So it's been a while since I looked at the regular combat rules and I apparently totally forgot that Athletics adds to defense. So. Arthur and Bob both do taekwondo together to keep in shape. They're mostly average joes so they both have a Str, Dex, Wits of 2. They keep in shape pretty well and have Athletics 2, but they're taught proper taekwondo form and are in it for the fitness, not really for learning how to self-defend, so they have Brawl 1. Their instructor sets them up in a sparring match against each other for practice, but Arthur and Bob get a bit too into it and try to actually land a proper blow. Both of them are rolling... a dice pool of -1, because they both have a Str+Brawl of 3 against a Defense of 4. On average, either one of them is only taking like one bashing damage every ten turns. If you gave them both knives (and Weaponry 1) and told them to try to stab each other, it still wouldn't help except that eventually one of them will actually take some lethal damage. Am I reading this right?
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Aug 29, 2018 05:19
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Yes, though in this case you are simulating two non-combatants sparring, so actual wounds should be rare. If their fight had higher stakes they'd be dropping willpower around, which would improve the odds of landing an effective blow, though that would still be relatively rare. It is still not a very desirable mechanic for what's happening, but it's kind of an edge case of the combat system. Unarmed combat really needs styles to be effective, while armed combat can make do with only the weapons. The general philosophy is that getting hit should be rarer than in previous iterations of the Storyteller/Storytelling system, but that it really sucks to be wounded by a real weapon, since they add their damage values directly. A single success with a shotgun or long sword is good for four health levels, which will take out minor NPC's and put most mortal majors and PC's into the danger zone of dying in the next hit. It is another story for many of the supernatural types, but you really need these higher defense values to keep mortal characters alive when weapons are drawn.
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Aug 29, 2018 05:48
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bewilderment posted:If you gave them both knives (and Weaponry 1) and told them to try to stab each other, it still wouldn't help except that eventually one of them will actually take some lethal damage. If they were just following orders in trying to stab each other yeah. If they're in an actual fight they might attempt to disarm the other, grapple, use Willpower, an all-out attack, use styles as ZearothK said, or some part of the environment, alternatively one might run because they didn't want to get stabbed. This is one of the reasons for the Intent rule. If you're just trying to see who gets stabbed first, after the first injury you're done. If you want to drive (a normal person) away or intimidate them into thinking you're dangerous, you can probably do it just by inflicting a Lethal damage or two. nofather fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 06:19
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Adding Athletics to Defense is a bad rule whose only purpose is to create a hypothetical population of chump combatants in the imagination of the optimizer.
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Aug 29, 2018 14:49
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This has already been covered but yeah, both from a game design perspective and a fluff perspective, people (and especially normal people) in a fight in ChroD rules are expected to be burning Willpower all the time. Also, the rules are not a simulation; two people having a sparring match in a dojo should probably be resolved by opposed brawl checks or something, not by the actual combat rules.
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Aug 29, 2018 16:22
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bewilderment posted:If you gave them both knives (and Weaponry 1) and told them to try to stab each other, it still wouldn't help except that eventually one of them will actually take some lethal damage. Don't forget that in nWoD, taking a single point of lethal damage means you're Beaten Down and very quickly lose the ability to fight back. e: also as Catfish says, nWoD is not remotely simulationist. It's cinematic, and from that perspective it makes total sense that two untrained goobers would maybe give each other bruises and call it quits - unless they went absolutely loving nuts genuinely trying to kill each other, represented by all-out attacks and willpower expenditure Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 16:52
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Okay, once more - I've tried not to hitch it on particular weapons this time, as well as remove unnecessary filler: Danish/Gautic Fighting: Shieldwall(*): The easiest way to survive an early medieval clusterfuck, the shieldwall is closing ranks with other shield-users. As long as two or more members of the coterie have bought this technique and carry a shield, they may receive an extra +1 to their defense rating. Note that this does not cost an action. Reckless Strike(**): An untrained fighter’s technique, that remains quite effective and the reason norse fighters are feared: The fearless frontal attack made with no regard for personal safety! When a character decides to All-Out Attack and possess this merit, they can perform it as a Reckless Strike. This follows the regular rules for an All-Out Attack, but provides an additional 2 levels of automatic damage if succesful, and may cause inexperienced or wavering opponents to flee if succesful. Shield Bash(***): A common technique in this area, the shield bash is a means to relocate an opponent, as well as stun them if lucky. The character must attack with their shield instead of their weapon to use this technique, only causing the damage value of the shield. Then a resisted challenge between the users Strength+Brawl and the victims Stamina+Brawl is made. A success allows the character to move their opponent half a metre in a direction of their choosing. On an exceptional success, the victim must check versus Knockdown. Forceful Strike (****): An experienced norse fighter can attack with their hand weapon while putting their body weight into the strike, bypassing some or all of their victims protection. When the character spends a willpower roll to gain additional dice on an attack roll, they may ignore two points of standard armor when doing damage. Combat Master (*****): Elder geats seem to be impossible to phaze in combat, being aware of their surroundings to a degree that no amount of attackers get the jump on them! Neither during regular defense or dodge actions are their Defense or Dodge scores decreased by multiple attackers. Tias fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 17:24
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You didn't take Mors's advice: get rid of these unnecessary rolls whose only purpose is to prevent your players from using their cool thing. Remove the per-scene restriction from Forceful Strike; it already has a cost. Put it on Reckless Strike (or add a Willpower cost to it) and remove the subsidiary roll (and maybe bump it down to +1 damage). Forceful Strike should take effect when the character pays Willpower for the standard +3 bonus, not as a separate Willpower cost; it is not worth using instead of the +3 bonus. (If you add a Willpower cost to Reckless Strike, Reckless Strike actually is worth a separate Willpower cost.) Remove the contested roll from Shield Bash. Either it just works, or the defender rolls Stamina + Brawl to resist at a dice penalty (attacker's Strength or Brawl? shield rating?).
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Aug 29, 2018 17:44
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