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Neopie posted:Oh, it was. As a person who is mentally ill, some RPGs really appeal to me and similar people, and Chuubos is one of those. Which others? I'm worried I might be in a pattern... looking at it, though, the tagline of Chuubo's ("a guide to finding magic and wonder in everyday life") becomes a bit creepier when seen in the light of appealing to depressed people, especially when it isn't really accurate (it only covers how to find magic and wonder in Chuubo's) Honestly I don't know if RPGs end up making me more depressed by reminding me of my inability to game or run anything that isn't a D&D variant...
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Oct 9, 2018 17:14
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm looking for a way to eliminate attack rolls while still preserving a significant element of success/failure in combat. I'd use this curve for calculating damage, not for something with a probabilistic chance of happening. When you asked about this, I started playing with some ideas in my head and came up with a neat little dice system that gives some cool results. I started thinking of duelists fighting one another and only scoring hits when their attacks were unpredictable or surprising. I thought about what the word unpredictable would mean in terms of dice and that brought to mind rolling different-sized dice and getting a higher result on the smaller die - like rolling a 5 on your d6 and a 3 on your d8. This led to a system that gives some weird bimodal distributions, where many attacks are "misses" and predictable (but still might connote damage - just lesser damage). I don't have any works-in-progress where this seems useful, so I'll just throw it out here and if anyone likes it or thinks it's cool, then by all means take it. Dueling Polyhedrals Roll 2 or more dice, increasing in size from d4 to d12. The dice you roll must be consecutive in size. More dice means more skill and higher chances to-hit. Larger dice mean more power. So a character rolling d4/d6 is very weak and unskilled, a character rolling d10/d12 is still unskilled but hits harder when they connect. A character rolling d4/d6/d8 is moderately skilled, while a character rolling d4/d6/d8/d10 is highly skilled. d4/d6/d8/d10/d12 is the highest level of skill naturally possible, rolling all five dice. All attacks deal damage equal to the smallest die as a baseline, with additional damage as described below. You score a hit and deal additional damage when your roll was unpredictable - that is, when a larger die has a lower result than a smaller die. The damage is the sum on all unpredictable dice. Examples: If you roll a 2/2/3 (i.e. you rolled a 2 on your d4, a 2 on your d6, and a 3 on your d8), that is a miss - predictable. But if you roll a 2/2/1 on those same dice, that is unpredictable, as the d8 is lower than both the d4 and the d6, and so you get 5 damage. If you roll a 2/1/2, you get 3 damage because the d6 was lower than the d4 (unpredictable), but the d8 was as large as the d6 (predictable). Optional rule for doubles: Add 1 damage for any doubles, 3 damage for triples, 6 damage for quadruples, and 10 damage for 5-of-a-kind. Optional d20s: When you get a special advantage on your attack, also roll a d20 - the result will often be the same, but you add an extra chance at a big hit if the d20 rolls low. (Note: if you make the base damage equal to the result on the largest die, then the distribution is less strongly bimodal, but you open up some design space for characters with gaps in their dice, like rolling a d4/d8 instead of a d4/d6. These characters will get significantly fewer hits, but will have higher baseline damage. This gets into some territory where it's unclear to players what constitutes an upgrade, and I don't like that lack of transparency. Is d4/d8 better or worse than d4/d6? Turns out, the higher baseline damage outweighs the fewer hits, but you need to do a bunch of math to figure it out.) Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 17:21
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Jimmy4400nav posted:I didn't see a GURPS thread so I thought I'd pop over here and ask. For creating a campaign, what would be a good charater point amount for a group? I'm doing a modern mercenary one (setting is real life ish, no magic or anything) and I want the characters to be good, but not uber high tier (though I do plan to make combat deadly). I read the 4e supplemental for Navy Seals and while a good baseline 250-275 points for a charater seemed a bit much. So the first thing to realize about GURPS is that the point value doesn't necessarily translate to combat effectiveness, because if you dump a hundred points into face and technical skills, it ain't gonna help you shoot better. I suppose this is rather tautological, but still. And then, consider that a Gun is an Easy skill based on DX. This means that increasing the skill to DX+6 costs 20 points, and then anything past that is going to need more than it costs to increase your DX directly. The sample characters from the SEALs in Vietnam book only have 13 DX and DX+2 in guns, which costs a grand total of 63 points for a skill of 15, but then most modern battle rifles have an Accuracy of 4 to 5, which will let you shoot at an effective 19 skill with a single Aim action. This is a rather roundabout way of saying that 250 points for a character isn't a lot: you're going to "cap" your weapon skill pretty easily with the first 80-100 points anyway, and the rest of it is just making you a more broader-skilled character.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:35
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hyphz posted:Which others? I'm worried I might be in a pattern... looking at it, though, the tagline of Chuubo's ("a guide to finding magic and wonder in everyday life") becomes a bit creepier when seen in the light of appealing to depressed people, especially when it isn't really accurate (it only covers how to find magic and wonder in Chuubo's) No, I'm pretty sure Chuubo really does represent Jenna's notions on how to find magic and wonder in everyday life (I think this becomes most obvious in the Christmas special, which has really only been previewed on her blog). Really, "overcoming despair" is probably the #1 theme in her work. It's just sometimes sad despair and sometimes sexy despair in a cravat.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:56
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Rand Brittain posted:sexy despair in a cravat.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:39
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Kai Tave posted:There are all sorts of Shadowrun hacks out there for all sorts of systems...PbtA, Savage Worlds, Blades in the Dark has several, FATE, GURPS, Hero, I'm sure someone's done one for D&D. The problem with most of them is that they don't give long-time Shadowrun fans the "90 pages of gear porn shopping trip" vibe that they want. I mean I love crunchy systems with lots of Lego bricks to play with myself, don't get me wrong, but if your criteria for an acceptable Shadowrun game is that it has to let you spend hours customizing your character's gun loadout and cyberware then you're probably out of luck unless you make a Spycraft hack or something because crunchy systems with lots of Lego bricks are a heck of a lot of work even if you're shoving someone else's game through a Shadowrun-shaped hole. My personal hack is Savage Worlds and while that system doesn't support hardcore gear-porn, it's more than enough for some tasteful gear erotica. Enough detail that you can have more than just one type of weapon available in each category and a few customization options. Currently been running a game of SR using that for the last few months..main difference is that characters are a lot tougher than average runners, so Pink Mohawk play is a lot more feasible. Players can drive through the front door, spray a place with automatic fire while shrugging off security forces return fire and then make their escape chased by banshees. Which means it's operating exactly as intended. Wasn't a perfect conversion though...one of the amusing bugs was an open-ended Edge I designed that's allowed one particular cyber-addicted player to jack their Toughness well over 20 before their body armor is applied. I mean, she's an inhuman mass of metal and flesh...but she can no-sell panther rounds. So there's that.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:22
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Kai Tave posted:I have no idea if it's any good but there's this. This looks great but is the typical finished KS heartbreaker of "Awesome game! Can't purchase it for another year."
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Oct 9, 2018 23:36
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Liquid Cannibalism posted:The Sprawl is not bad, so I hear. PBTA Shadowrun. gradenko_2000 posted:I feel like this is starting to get into the territory where Shadowrun, like D&D, means different things to different people, and reasserting the focus on any one thing is going to cause someone else to be turned off, even if the overall design is tighter (and therefore more coherent) as a result Yeah the Sprawl designer is a Shadowrun junkie from way back but the Sprawl is very much focused on a particular style of game and the bits of SR he was interested in.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:59
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xiw posted:Yeah the Sprawl designer is a Shadowrun junkie from way back but the Sprawl is very much focused on a particular style of game and the bits of SR he was interested in. Fair enough cause Shadowrun has way too many themes and styles for one game imo.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:01
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fool_of_sound posted:Fair enough cause Shadowrun has way too many themes and styles for one game imo. This is an extremely relevant point, yeah. Shadowrun hails from the day when RPGs were a lot less thematically focused and had an attitude of, if not literal, than figurative sandbox style "just do whatever you want!" about them which means that as a game it simultaneously presents numerous themes and styles but never really focuses on any of them.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:So the first thing to realize about GURPS is that the point value doesn't necessarily translate to combat effectiveness, because if you dump a hundred points into face and technical skills, it ain't gonna help you shoot better. I suppose this is rather tautological, but still. I think a good way of looking at this is, do you want your characters to be as skilled as those Navy Seals or less skilled? Are the characters going to be ordinary soldiers or special forces type soldiers?
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Oct 10, 2018 00:22
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Add me to the list of cursed souls, doomed to attempt to capture Shadowrun in a more-palatable system of their choice (in my case, nWoD.) Continuing the comparison to D&D, many SR play groups endure and have a good time because their ST is (knowingly or unknowingly) jettisoning large chunks of the subsystems. Part of the difficulty of doing something about, say, the enduring problem with computers is that so many players haven't ever had to confront it.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:38
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Kai Tave posted:This is an extremely relevant point, yeah. Shadowrun hails from the day when RPGs were a lot less thematically focused and had an attitude of, if not literal, than figurative sandbox style "just do whatever you want!" about them which means that as a game it simultaneously presents numerous themes and styles but never really focuses on any of them. I always enjoyed rock stars being next to mercs in the archetype list in 1e.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:40
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xiw posted:I always enjoyed rock stars being next to mercs in the archetype list in 1e. Wasn't 1st e largely a cyberpunk knock off with d&d races added? So that makes sense. They had rockstars, security, reporters, and suits among their more normal classes.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:So the first thing to realize about GURPS is that the point value doesn't necessarily translate to combat effectiveness, because if you dump a hundred points into face and technical skills, it ain't gonna help you shoot better. I suppose this is rather tautological, but still. Thats good to know, I'm really new to GURPS and am still learning the basics of how stuff works. I realize modern combat tends to already be finicky in most tabletops and GURPS is famous for its rules, but hey go big or go home! Out of curiosity, for combat how do you handle defense in a modern gunfight? I'm reading through the tactical shooting supplement and it has some good suggestions for cover, jinking between spots and a few other small things for defence, but the main thing I'm getting is mostly be the first to shoot. DocBubonic posted:I think a good way of looking at this is, do you want your characters to be as skilled as those Navy Seals or less skilled? Are the characters going to be ordinary soldiers or special forces type soldiers? Less skilled, but not so horribly. I wanted the players to be able to have a couple areas they do well in and definitely hold a good degree of competence in the battlefield, but not be murder gods while still leaving it open for them to have some other skills. So kind of an inbetween I guess, in terms of skills they'd be more gruntish, but flexible.
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Oct 10, 2018 03:23
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You do you, no desire to yuck any yums, but I could not recommend harder to not GM for the first time with GURPS. It’s really detailed and crunchy (which can be cool and good!), so it can lead to getting bogged down and give you bad habits. If you wanna run a GURPS game, god speed, but like play a game of Fiasco or something first so you can get an idea about big picture stuff like pacing and engagement beforehand. Even if it’s just a session 0 type thing where you set the campaign up first. I say this as someone who started DMing 2e D&D and had to unlearn a lot of poo poo to be a better DM and who is really happy they did that. Not an attack on GURPS or saying don’t do the game, just pointing out that learning to drive on those weird Saabs with the joystick might not be the best first driving experience.
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Oct 10, 2018 04:41
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Less skilled, but not so horribly. I wanted the players to be able to have a couple areas they do well in and definitely hold a good degree of competence in the battlefield, but not be murder gods while still leaving it open for them to have some other skills. So kind of an inbetween I guess, in terms of skills they'd be more gruntish, but flexible. See, that's one of those differences. I prefer to run my Shadowrun as 'jumped up street gangers', not the A-team.
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Oct 10, 2018 04:43
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Xiahou Dun posted:It�s Is this just for me and am I having a stroke
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Oct 10, 2018 05:09
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Forum is loving up apostrophes for reasons unknown.
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Oct 10, 2018 05:15
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Well, I'll just appreciate the irony of me demanding mechanical rigor in Elfgames while posting on the Palladium Games of internet forums. E: Haha, my apostrophes are safe and sound. It'll be okay 
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Oct 10, 2018 05:25
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Mr. Maltose posted:Forum is loving up apostrophes for reasons unknown. It's iOS devices that have 'smart quotes' turned on, on their keyboards, that's causing the problem. It's why it's only specific users that have the issue in their posts.
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Oct 10, 2018 05:42
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Pondering a RPG system build around use of temporary upgrades and transformations. Might be along the lines of daily/encounter powers. ('daily' likely being more 'per adventure'. Maybe 'chapter' abilities, like in Storyteller?) The PCs being various forms of AIs and robots with equippable parts, programs and upgrades. Possibly a class system, where said upgrades either emphasise an element they're good at or allow them to branch out at the expense of some of their original skills. Rock-paper-scissors strategies?
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Oct 10, 2018 06:31
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So I'm reading nobilis 2e and man does it just roll up everything I loved about stuff like WoD, In Nomine, monomyth and just odd contradictory cosmology. I wish my friends and I had more time for rpgs these days. Though it also looks like this would he a harder game to get some of my more hidebound system heavy friends to transition to, but would be a great introduction to those just getting into rpgs not quite as indoctrinated into 'the gm controls everything' or adversarial systems. I hope Moran gets enough money from that bundle of holding sale to help with whatever issues she's having.
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Oct 10, 2018 07:38
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Pondering a RPG system build around use of temporary upgrades and transformations. Might be along the lines of daily/encounter powers. ('daily' likely being more 'per adventure'. Maybe 'chapter' abilities, like in Storyteller?) The PCs being various forms of AIs and robots with equippable parts, programs and upgrades. Possibly a class system, where said upgrades either emphasise an element they're good at or allow them to branch out at the expense of some of their original skills. Rock-paper-scissors strategies? If you haven't you should take a look at Gamma World 7E (the D&D 4E derived one) because it's got something kind of similar to this. A lot of the more power-esque winds up breaking/burning out through use, mutations go away and get replaced with new ones throughout play, etc. It's not very RPS in execution, but it does the "scavenging for gear in a weird post-apocalyptic setting" in a way that doesn't result in people having exhaustive equipment lists accumulate over time.
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Oct 10, 2018 08:40
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Xiahou Dun posted:You do you, no desire to yuck any yums, but I could not recommend harder to not GM for the first time with GURPS. Hey I appreciate the pointers, I totally understand GURPS has a ton of weirdness to it andvit might be difficult. I actually have played quite a few games of Fiasco (amazing game) so using that as a session 0 is a cool idea! Liquid Cannibalism posted:See, that's one of those differences. I prefer to run my Shadowrun as 'jumped up street gangers', not the A-team. Defenently! I love games where you play a more mundane role and have it work up.
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Oct 10, 2018 12:14
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Bedlamdan posted:Is this just for me and am I having a stroke
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Oct 10, 2018 14:13
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Kai Tave posted:If you haven't you should take a look at Gamma World 7E (the D&D 4E derived one) because it's got something kind of similar to this. A lot of the more power-esque winds up breaking/burning out through use, mutations go away and get replaced with new ones throughout play, etc. It's not very RPS in execution, but it does the "scavenging for gear in a weird post-apocalyptic setting" in a way that doesn't result in people having exhaustive equipment lists accumulate over time. Ha glad I wasn't the only one who thought of gamma world reading that post.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:21
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Thats good to know, I'm really new to GURPS and am still learning the basics of how stuff works. I realize modern combat tends to already be finicky in most tabletops and GURPS is famous for its rules, but hey go big or go home! Be careful of the Tactical Shooting book. Its a bit too comprehensive. Take what you want to make things interesting (like cover and small things for defense) and avoid things that might bog down combat too much. Also yes, combat is deadly in GURPS and guns make things worse. quote:Less skilled, but not so horribly. I wanted the players to be able to have a couple areas they do well in and definitely hold a good degree of competence in the battlefield, but not be murder gods while still leaving it open for them to have some other skills. So kind of an inbetween I guess, in terms of skills they'd be more gruntish, but flexible. In my experience, I'd say put the point total between 150 and 200. This assumes that they take more than just gun skills. Seals in Vietnam should give you a rough guideline of the kind of skills the characters should possess. EDIT You might want to put together a template of skills that all the characters should possess, so that you know they'll have necessary non-combat skills.
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Oct 10, 2018 19:58
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DocBubonic posted:Be careful of the Tactical Shooting book. Its a bit too comprehensive. Take what you want to make things interesting (like cover and small things for defense) and avoid things that might bog down combat too much. Also yes, combat is deadly in GURPS and guns make things worse. Oh yeah for sure! I've been thumbing through to help pick and choose rules and am putting together a flow chart so I can make battle go smoothly. I'm also getting a template going too, it'll have the same mandatory disadvantages (extreme hazard duty and loyalty only to the corporation) as the SEALS and some required skills (such as pistols, basic maintenance swimming, fitness and a few others) so that even if guys wanna try and play supporting roles they'll still be able to handle themselves if things go pear shaped.
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Oct 10, 2018 20:38
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Hey if I wanna run a super hero campaign so I can make some dumb hammy fun for a few sessions whats a good system?
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Oct 10, 2018 22:35
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Masks is pretty much the only good superhero system unless you like absurd random power generation and little else
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Oct 10, 2018 22:38
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Wrestlepig posted:Masks is pretty much the only good superhero system unless you like absurd random power generation and little else Masks is specifically for teen supers struggling to mature though. Doesn't always do 'dumb hammy fun'. Actually the real supers system for dumb fun is Doctor Magnethands.
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Oct 10, 2018 22:45
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I'm a fan of Truth and Justice, it's got some flaws and is a little bit of a dated version of PDQ. If there's interest, I put together an unofficial 2nd edition of it which features some of the ideas from later PDQ games: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1V7uNzfqcB9XYHYR3xa2s_QaLSSUMNj4-
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Oct 10, 2018 23:08
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Masks seems a bit like everybody is roleplaying Squirrel Girl which is cool and all but it feels like thats a real narrow niche to shove every player into?
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Oct 10, 2018 23:13
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Agent355 posted:Masks seems a bit like everybody is roleplaying Squirrel Girl which is cool and all but it feels like thats a real narrow niche to shove every player into? This seems like a weird take since everyone mostly has useful superpowers. Unless they don't. Everyone is actually the Teen Titans or similar. The Bull - uhhh Cyborg I guess, I didn't actually watch Teen Titans The Beacon - 60s Robin The Delinquent - Jinx The Doomed - Raven The Janus - Spider-Man (or Taylor from Worm if you wanna be that edgy) The Legacy - Kid Flash The Nova - young Superman and variations thereof The Outsider - Starfire The Protege - more serious Robins The Transformed - Beast Boy
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Oct 10, 2018 23:21
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I don't know, I'm just scanning through the list. I just see lots of actions like comforting and persuading and stuff. I don't know how the rules actually function in play, it just seems to be covering a very different sort of super hero than somebody who is going to throw down with dr. doom over his moon laser. It's not the character archetypes themselves that seem squirrel girl but the system?
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Oct 10, 2018 23:25
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Agent355 posted:Hey if I wanna run a super hero campaign so I can make some dumb hammy fun for a few sessions whats a good system? Take a look at Valor maybe? I haven't run it but it seems ideal for dumb hammy Superhero fun.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:27
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http://ipressgames.com/with-great-power/ I had a lot of fun with With Great Power.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:31
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honestly one of the best hammy superhero games is reskinned d&d 4e
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Oct 10, 2018 23:32
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Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (is the generic Cortex+ Superheroes ever coming out?) Hard as gently caress to find (you have to pirate it now basically), but very very fun and perfect. Only problem is that it'll feel a bit samey after awhile, but for a short to mid-length campaign, it's perfect.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:34
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