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Is it going according to plan, or has it jumped the rails?
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Sep 21, 2018 22:45
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tokenbrownguy posted:I’m running the GPC right now, ask me anything. I think we’re on session twenty one. I have 100 ideas for games to run that seem interesting and no time so I'll try not to waste your time, but how do you structure a session? Do you do them 1:1 with gameplay years? Basically divide out a point where there's an adventure and sandwich it between the court sessions?
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Sep 21, 2018 23:06
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Moriatti posted:Try: Right on. I bounced off GH but I think that was because I was joining a campaign en media res. Never tried PT or DT, but if I get the chance I definitely will now! I've heard of Valor on here, but I'll have to look into it more. And Strike was on my too play list until I realized it would be easier to just get 4e played and that's not happening with any of my groups any time soon. On recollecting, I did sit down to play Doomtown, the KS'd from like 5 years ago I think, but then the owner decided we should play Epic instead. And while I find high level Epic gameplay interesting enough now too watch, it didn't stick the landing back then. Thanks everyone for the recommendations! I'm trying to work on expanding the games I play.
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Sep 21, 2018 23:11
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Anniversary posted:Right on. I bounced off GH but I think that was because I was joining a campaign en media res. Never tried PT or DT, but if I get the chance I definitely will now! Yeah, a big part pf Gloomhaven is building your guy with your friends, it's not a one and done type deal so I can see bouncing off it. Strike! Is really ideal for one shots and short games IMO, otherwise 4e is probably my go to, just a bit more toys to play with. Come up with a cool enough setting and run it in Strike and people will join. Let me know how you like these suggestions, and also some of the other stuff, I may crib off the answers you've recieved.
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Sep 21, 2018 23:55
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Moriatti posted:Yeah, a big part pf Gloomhaven is building your guy with your friends, it's not a one and done type deal so I can see bouncing off it.  Definitely!It'll probably be a while before I get to try anything recommended sadly. But hopefully sometime soon! I keep meaning to pick up Strike! but always am reminded of it when I'm broke so to the back of my mind it goes. Trying to think of other games that have interested me: Summoner Wars (ran out of people to play with, never felt super enthused to play it), Mage Wars (I literally don't get the games action economy on a fundamental level, and the only way I could win by avoiding it was actually not legal after some research, so I stopped wanting to play it - the game kinda reminded me of playing a multi-unit hero in a moba, another action economy type deal I'll never get), various TCGs (no one wants to get recommended these :P), Not Alone (only played once, I liked what it was going for but don't know if it's implementation would keep my interest), Castles of Burgundy (point salad euros are usually a miss, but this is the one I most remember playing?), Risk 2142 (wouldn't play it now, but at the time I first played it, it felt revolutionary), BatHotH (I loved this when it first came out, spent nights running through it with friends, I don't think it holds up and I'd rather not play it because the less I'm reminded of how poorly done it is the happier I am with my memories of how much fun I had), and that's what I can think of off the top of my head. Obviously lots of these I've grown out of, but there's something in a lot of them that interested me as a less experienced tradgamer and a more refined game that did something similar could probably draw me in. Oh, on the RPG front: DnD 3 and 4 have mixed memories (though generally much more positive for 4, both because of its elegance and the increased maturity of my gaming groups), Ars Magica (always interested, will probably never play, the bookkeeping would probably kill me?), Dark Heresy (never got far with this one, but I had fun STing it), nWoD (Hunter was the best rpg gaming experience I've had, we rotated story teller and I really enjoyed my character, which I didn't even make and misread the concept (it was paranormal PI, I read paranoid PI - which came back to bite me when in our last session I did something crazy paranoid and they were like "why would you do that?!"), I kinda enjoyed Vampire though those friends consider it superhero-y now), oWoD (actually pretty bad memories, but I was really new to the hobby), also I think I prefer Unknown Armies 2e to 3e for gaming, but plot wise 3e seems more solid. Sorry for the wall of text y'all.
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Sep 22, 2018 01:04
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Anyone here planning on running an online game anytime soon(that's not PBP), cause I'm getting the itch to play but no one to play with locally, and no one seems to be recruiting right now as far as I can tell
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Sep 22, 2018 03:47
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Serf posted:have we discovered the mythical "listens to ap podcasts but doesn't play games" person yet? i know several people who got into stuff like the adventure zone and then asked me how they could play too. i think that people understand how low the barrier to entry is and they get in that way. i've yet to meet anyone who listens to these podcasts and isn't playing rpgs in some form or fashion or looking to get started like half the dipshits in the McElroy thread who get violently angry if you dare talk about the system aspects of TAZ in earnest
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Sep 22, 2018 05:10
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I have 100 ideas for games to run that seem interesting and no time so I'll try not to waste your time, but how do you structure a session? Do you do them 1:1 with gameplay years? Basically divide out a point where there's an adventure and sandwich it between the court sessions? potatocubed posted:Is it going according to plan, or has it jumped the rails? Short answer: Both yes and no. During the less compelling years of the GPC, I'll try to fit two years worth of in-game time into a single three hour session. The most compelling of Stafford's years I've stretched out into two or three sessions. The game has stayed "on-rails" from a narrative perspective. Currently my players are on the climax of a... seven or eight session road trip to Ireland chasing a mythical Moorish blacksmith. Those seven/eights sessions have stretched over a single GPC "year" - and I'm bending the XP / skill rules to match the narrative. I would encourage anyone considering running the GPC to not sweat the one-year, one-session ratio. Yes the GPC is huge. Yes it'll takes years to finish. But honestly, as long as everyone's having fun I could care less whether we reach the end. Pace your sessions like you would a FATE or PbtA game and keep it punchy. Long answer: I've been thinking a lot about my Pendragon campaign recently, so please indulge this post. For context, I'm running the GPC with three college buddies to which I've stayed pretty close. One total TRPG novice, one experienced player, and one who's new-ish but throwing himself into the hobby. We play weekly-as-we-can with long breaks where life gets in the way. As we've scattered over the US, we play remotely in Discord with Roll 20 dice/map support. I bring this up because more than anything because I feel like my game would've failed without some permanent social bonds to keep us going - given the technological and temporal constraints. The first few "years" of the GPC were pretty dull. I quickly regretted volunteering to run the system. Like a lot of posters here, I've embraced the story-gaming approach. I've played in more Apocalypse World games than I can count, plenty of Dungeon World, am currently running and playing in two separate Blades in the Dark games, and have run one-shots of Copperhead County, Band of Blades, Monster Hearts, Masks, finished a Scum & Villainy campaign, and am dying to run Dogs in the Bark. I saw running the GPC as a challenge. I studied Lit in grad school, so was familiar with the Arthurian canon. What could be more easy than knights, dragons, Saxons, and princesses? Was I a bad enough dude to handle a crunchy, boring system with a meta-campaign almost literally on rails? I thought so. The answer early on was a firm no. I felt bored, anxious, and contemptuous of my sessions. I felt that I wasn't delivering my usual quality in a given session. I found myself dropping pretty awful D&D type cliches into my Pendragon sessions with little consistent narrative tying the game across sessions. My PCs were almost indistinguishable and my players struggling to find any purchase for individual character arcs. The turning point for me was reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for the first time after session ten-or-so. Over a hundred years later, and Twain still gets what appeals about the Arthurian mythos to the contemporary reader: He positions the reader and narrator as a condescending observer of the cruelties of the Arthurian mythos - knights as proud fools, peasants as pathetic, based servants, women as a essential-yet-abused minority - but utterly loyal to underlying values of the legend. Twain's protagonist is an honorable, intelligent, and gallant man who stretches above and beyond to better the people around him. He loathes the Arthurian reality, but loves the Arthurian ideal. That combination of loathing and respect really re-framed how I approached my campaign. Instead of trying to play it straight, I've switched to a more... genre-savvy approach where I position my player-knights to explore elements of the GPC that I find problematic, disgusting, or horrific. More of a World of Darkness (lacking the 90s "edginess") approach to the GPC, if you will, where the knights are bright points of light and dark in the murky-grey world around them. All credit to my players, who have risen to the challenge and are exploring all elements of the radical take on the setting. This Monday our knights hit the climax of a crazy Irish adventure in which one of the original numbers has fallen, one is riding to battle sworn to kill the others, and the last has thrown aside any pretense of knightly honor and has donned peasants garb to steal, rob, and kill. The arc's finale is going to culminate in a great siege at one of the northern Irish motte-and-bailes with over three Irish factions, two supernatural players, and a whole shitload of independent factors coming to a head. Now that I'm over the initial hump, I can say that the potential of the GPC is real. I encourage anyone who, like me, considered crunchy systems an anathema to give it a shot. Honestly, I think Stafford had his heart in the right place when designing the system. That said, I'd encourage anyone with tastes regarding TRPGs to lean on the strengths of newer systems. Run your GPC campaign like an extended ApocWorld game - think in terms of clocks, of hard moves, and failing forward. Don't be afraid to throw out entire subsystems (looking at you Book of Battle) and replace it with more simplistic frameworks to make running and playing a breeze. The session / year ratio is an illusion, or worse, a crutch. This post ended up longer and more maudlin than I expected. Much love to Liesmith, DivineCoffeeBinge, and the other folks running the GPC on these forums around four years ago. I played in those games! While they barely scratched the surface of the GPC they planted the seed of one of my favorite campaigns.
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Sep 22, 2018 05:43
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tokenbrownguy, I would basically read as many words as you are willing to write about your GPC. It's always been a dream of mine, I just need the correct players and format. Do you guys only play during scheduled sessions or is there some asynchronous roleplaying/gaming as well?
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Sep 22, 2018 05:52
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:How do you actually run a campaign like that one? Has anyone here done it? The Great Pendragon Campaign is kind of like the The Guide to Glorantha in that it's useful toilet reading for a fanbase of a smaller game line that's been sustained from steadily-produced content over decades, with the added boost from the overlap between tabletop gaming nerds and Arthurian lore nerds. Pendragon has been around long enough that there's no way there haven't been people who went through the whole Arthurian cycle on their own and reenacted them in years-long Pendragon campaigns. The Great Pendragon Campaign is just capitalizing on that with a "canon" version and making an easier guide for future groups to reference. It's definitely the sort of thing you'd need near 100% buy-in from a really dedicated group to see to the end, though.
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Sep 22, 2018 06:09
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theironjef posted:My podcast just reviews old RPGs and we have a ton of listeners who don't play or read games. It's just entertainment to them. you mostly review games that are impossible or generally unwise to play it's not surprising that a large number of people aren't coming to you for rpg reasons
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Sep 22, 2018 09:56
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Elfgames posted:you mostly review games that are impossible or generally unwise to play it's not surprising that a large number of people aren't coming to you for rpg reasons speak for yourself- I had to give up my planned game of Fantasy Wargaming The Highest Level Of All because I just wasn't up to Jeff and Jon's caliber
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Sep 22, 2018 10:18
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To accompany SUNLESS SKIES, we've worked with RPG designers Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor to create a free pen and paper RPG in the Fallen London Universe
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Sep 22, 2018 18:21
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gradenko_2000 posted:speak for yourself- I had to give up my planned game of Fantasy Wargaming The Highest Level Of All because I just wasn't up to Jeff and Jon's caliber Oh but you had a slight chance to roll poorly and play as the hated Jew or the untrustworthy Moslem! Either of which, of course, would be better than playing as a woman.
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Sep 22, 2018 18:34
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Foglet posted:To accompany SUNLESS SKIES, we've worked with RPG designers Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor to create a free pen and paper RPG in the Fallen London Universe I would say "finally" but I would also be far more confident in saying that if they were using an established system rather than making their own. It's incredible how every game those guys make -- seemingly no matter who they work with -- has great atmosphere and lore and absolute dumpster-tier gameplay.
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Sep 22, 2018 19:50
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But it's by the Spire and Honey Heist team, surely they can do it. Also Cultist Simulator is good.
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Sep 22, 2018 20:42
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I would say "finally" but I would also be far more confident in saying that if they were using an established system rather than making their own. It's incredible how every game those guys make -- seemingly no matter who they work with -- has great atmosphere and lore and absolute dumpster-tier gameplay. It's because Freemium Facebook Game is the default design philosophy for their stuff.
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Sep 22, 2018 21:15
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Joe Slowboat posted:But it's by the Spire and Honey Heist team, surely they can do it. No, it really loving isn't. It sucks to play.
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Sep 22, 2018 21:19
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It's interesting the first time because you're supposed to puzzle out the mechanics yourself, but afterwards it loses all replay value. Also I ruined the game for myself by checking online whenever I got stuck 
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Sep 22, 2018 21:26
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Pollyanna posted:No, it really loving isn't. It sucks to play.
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Sep 22, 2018 21:39
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Yawgmoth posted:Please tell me what's wrong with it because it seems like a game that would be right up my alley but I have been burned by that type of game before. Haven't played, and totally feel you on the idea that it seems cool, but watching gameplay and sitting on the idea of interacting with the premise through the mechanisms I saw completely soured me on it.
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Sep 22, 2018 21:42
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Yawgmoth posted:Please tell me what's wrong with it because it seems like a game that would be right up my alley but I have been burned by that type of game before. It's extremely cool and good until about the 2/3ds mark where the polish finally gets burnished off and you realize you're hooked up to a series of timers hanging off RNG checks and trial and error. It goes on too long for its own good. The other issue, and honestly the one I think is far worse, is because it goes on too long and has a lot of repetition, the actual main draw of the game - the writing, which I will actually say is really, really good - starts to become tedious and an annoyance in your way, despite how good it is. You can only read the same three or so results from a given option so many times before you start skipping everything that window says, which means you can very easily be conditioned to reflexively skip a new piece of writing and only realize it was new the instant after it vanishes - and there's no way to go back and see what it was. I seriously missed like a quarter of the fluff in the final stretch of the game because I was fighting over a dozen hours of muscle memory saying "irrelevant, seen it." It's a drat shame, especially because as I said, the first time you read something, it's usually really loving good and effective...but it loses that magic when you see it fifteen more times.
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Sep 22, 2018 21:57
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I bought Cultist Simulator because I wanted a well-written trip through exotic weirdness. What I got was a frantic starvation simulator where I spend so much time desperately hunting for money and food that I have no idea what's going on. Which I guess is probably a pretty good simulation of being in an esoteric cult, but a pretty bad game.
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Sep 22, 2018 21:57
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I wonder if the game qua game would be improved by it not being real time and the experience be better if it highlighted new results in some way?
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Sep 22, 2018 22:04
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Daeren posted:It's a drat shame, especially because as I said, the first time you read something, it's usually really loving good and effective...but it loses that magic when you see it fifteen more times. This was my Fallen London experience after a certain point. Amazing writing and storylines, and gameplay that ensures you have to grind those storylines over and over until they become completely tedious, just to get to a new stat tier and get fresh new writing to grind into the ground.
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Sep 22, 2018 22:12
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Anniversary posted:Games I should, but don't like: Battle Con, MtG There's a good starter guide here, and you could always ask around the BattleCON thread!
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Sep 22, 2018 23:09
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I like BattleCON from an objective perspective but in actual play I find it mentally exhausting to engage with for long and it seems like the sort of game you have to really sit down and commit to playing a lot in order to appreciably improve at it. It's a bit like an actual fighting game in that regard, I guess.
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Sep 22, 2018 23:21
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Even after I cheated Cultist Simulator to get 999 money, it still took WAY too long to reach the endgame. Everything about the ritual crafting system is designed to waste your time, even after you understand how it all loving works. There's so much good writing and cool lore, but it starts to bleed together since you can't really focus on the interesting parts while also juggling the other bits. Also, re: getting people into Gloomhaven, my buddy and I (who have been playing it together for half a year or so, just as two) have brought people into the game with the following system: 1. Pitch the available classes as simply as possible (cool rock tank guy, magic DPS guy, etc.) 2. Set them up, run the teach (actually pretty quick if you're just explaining how the scenario gameplay works, skipping all monster AI and town stuff) 3. Leave them at level 1, even if prosperity rules say otherwise, and give them a few items to "test-drive." 4. Run a scenario (which I usually have set up while my buddy is teaching) at a really easy difficulty level - usually 1 or 2. It'll usually be a stomp, but it's fun for the newbie to win, and also means mistakes aren't so deadly as if we were playing at the right difficulty. Afterwards, ask if they enjoyed, if they'd want to play that character again, etc. - if yes, then you can give them the pad and level them up to 2 (or 3 now that we've bumped prosperity again). They like the instant level up, and then we let them go shopping on their own (paying the correct price if they keep the items they "borrowed", otherwise just returning them to the shop). The two others we've brought in like this have both ended up chomping at the bit to play another scenario (or three, one night).
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Sep 22, 2018 23:23
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I've clearly had the polar opposite experience of Cultist Simulator. I found the game engaging; figuring out the economy and how to juggle things was more fun than most classic roguelikes have been for me (it's more of a roguelite), and while I did have a number of runs that fell apart early, I always enjoyed learning new things about how to juggle the elements. I'm probably only going to play one more before the next patch expands the available options, but for now the writing has more than carried the workmanlike gameplay. I play it like FTL, real time with pausing. Also, always play on fast forward; I do wish there were higher speeds one could set the timers to. The lore is also quite detailed and quite elaborate, such that I have about one page of mechanics notes and five pages of lore notes. If you enjoy doing research and want a miniaturized facsimile of research from varied texts, it's a good simulation of that. Also after a few runs I found that I could really easily juggle most mechanical challenges with any Legacy or job except Detective, which is kind of hellish. My most recent runs have all been pretty assured of eventual victory, so I could take my time and acquire new knowledge of mechanics and read rare texts.
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Sep 22, 2018 23:56
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I actually really appreciate your divergent take!
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Sep 23, 2018 00:06
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I should say that I like the concept of Cultist Simulator, and how successfully it manages to evoke the idea of descending deeper into madness as you pursue your arcane goals. The way work and meeting your needs becomes an annoyance makes a lot of thematic sense, as does how messy your board becomes as you constantly acquire new scraps of power, connections, and cult members (that said, I'd appreciate a bar that just held your stats and money, since those just get sprayed everywhere and shuffling them around is more tedious than thematic). Much like Papers, Please, it uses repetition and frustration to evoke a feeling through mechanics, which is really cool! It's just that, to me, a successful run takes WAY too long, and the penalty for loss is too steep. Re-leveling your stats sucks, going through the work events sucks, re-learning languages sucks... if you could pick a cult member as a successor, and they could keep all of your lore fragments, I'd like the game whole lot more.
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Sep 23, 2018 00:12
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Hm, I've never had that much trouble keeping the board organized? New cards always appear in the center of the board, and cards always return to where you picked them up from when they come out of a timer. I've actually gotten a little annoyed at how similar my boards always end up looking as I get to mid-game, and so I've been trying out different arrangement schemes. I will agree that the back end of a run becomes long and drawn out; there's no real danger or excitement (though, uh, my current Detective run has been edge-of-my-seat every single second, so, there's exceptions caused by infinite despair). However, there is new lore and rare texts, and I generally use the period before a final Ascension for messing around a bit. I didn't find it horribly slow. EDIT: I also benefit from having friends who started playing at the same time, and we discuss lore and strategies together while we play. It makes chatting feel like occult correspondence, and we've been able to back each other up without any major spoiler issues.
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Sep 23, 2018 00:33
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I just saw a CaH tournament at a bar advertised. I just died inside.
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Sep 23, 2018 01:06
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how do you make a tournament out of Cyanide and Happiness
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Sep 23, 2018 01:32
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Anniversary posted:I just saw a CaH tournament at a bar advertised. I once played Apples to Apples with someone who would get really argumentative about their cards and take judge decisions personally, and that was nightmarish even in the context of a big goofy college group. The concept of transferring that experience to CAH, in a competitive tournament format where everyone is drinking, is soul-withering.
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Sep 23, 2018 01:35
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Coming up with strategies to beat the Big Black Dick meta.
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Sep 23, 2018 01:39
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Alien Rope Burn posted:There's a good starter guide here, and you could always ask around the BattleCON thread!
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Sep 23, 2018 01:44
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Kai Tave posted:Coming up with strategies to beat the Big Black Dick meta. i think you accidentally posted your incel forum thread as a reply here
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Sep 23, 2018 01:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:There's a good starter guide here, and you could always ask around the BattleCON thread! It's still possible BaCon will click for me, but I generally don't like heavily meta dependent games? I'll check out that link though!
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Sep 23, 2018 01:46
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Anniversary posted:It's still possible BaCon will click for me, but I generally don't like heavily meta dependent games? I'll check out that link though! Unless you mean something different, it's about as far from "meta-dependent" as possible because it's entirely matchup-dependent. The only "meta" characters are the 4-5 characters that are clearly a bit too strong, and they're all getting hit with the nerf bat as part of this Kickstarter.
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Sep 23, 2018 01:54
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