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To be fair this is the illigitimate birth table... but the odds are the table to determine if you're legitimate or illegitimate has a malus if you're a half orc too.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:11
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Night10194 posted:I think a lot of that comes from the way game books are writing prompts. Trying to focus on having a hidden Big Answer in the gameline makes it very likely that, due to the nature of the books as a writing prompt for GMs and groups, a group will have hugely diverged away from your intended SLA Industries The Truth clever secret to the point that it won't match up with their use of the game or setting at all anyway. Plus, in trying to keep it mysterious, you usually make it well hidden enough that it becomes irrelevant to the game's original premise. It also tends to invalidate that original premise, and people buy your game because they like and want to play the original premise, so that's another issue. The nature of having a big mystery, and in particular one that you've concealed the answer to in a supplement further down the publication line, will also mean that the GM and players most likely already have some theories/answers in mind when they reach that book and those answers are often more personally interesting to them than whatever some other writers came up with. The fact that the "big mysteries" in metaplots have very often been used as "gently caress you!" swerves that are hostile and destructive to extant games doesn't help either.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:17
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Night10194 posted:I think a lot of that comes from the way game books are writing prompts. Trying to focus on having a hidden Big Answer in the gameline makes it very likely that, due to the nature of the books as a writing prompt for GMs and groups, a group will have hugely diverged away from your intended SLA Industries The Truth clever secret to the point that it won't match up with their use of the game or setting at all anyway. Plus, in trying to keep it mysterious, you usually make it well hidden enough that it becomes irrelevant to the game's original premise. It also tends to invalidate that original premise, and people buy your game because they like and want to play the original premise, so that's another issue. Nuns with Guns posted:The nature of having a big mystery, and in particular one that you've concealed the answer to in a supplement further down the publication line, will also mean that the GM and players most likely already have some theories/answers in mind when they reach that book and those answers are often more personally interesting to them than whatever some other writers came up with.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:26
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Halloween Jack posted:We still live in a society running on the fumes of 50s anticommunism, so I don't see the problem. (The actual problem is that Friend Computer is more like a nightmare of Communist central planning than the passel of ridiculous ghouls that run our society.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:27
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Halloween Jack posted:This is a good answer. SLA Industries is a really good example of what you're talking about, because The Truth is irrelevant to what the PCs spend their time doing, but also says that what they're doing is meaningless. Every game I've played in that had a Big Twist that turned out well had it be a thing that the PCs doing what the PCs do would still be important to the game. Find out you're in the remains of a sci-fi setting after being a fantasy monster hunter? Same skills work on a giant robot. Find out you're fighting aliens in a spy game? You still fight them with spy movie gadgets and action hero antics. Etc. E: What I mean with this is most published RPGs that had big secrets do not respect that principle. As you say, SLA is the best example. But take 7th Sea 1e and the Syreneth stuff; that kind of invalidated the normal witty swashbuckling adventure. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Apr 10, 2019 |
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Apr 10, 2019 16:35
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Halloween Jack posted:Yeah, the other thing that tends to happen is the "mystery box" approach, where there's no actual mystery, you're just swerving the audience, hoping they won't notice that you're making it up as you go along. Yeah, you can see that a lot in the 7th Sea twists. I'm sure some of the things regarding the mantis aliens and secret societies were planned from the beginning, but a lot of it reeked of trying to string together disparate clues that were dropped across a dozen books over a decade, especially by the time they got to the point of explaining what the true nature of God (Theus) was. They almost had a good thing going there, too, by going "Here's three possible answers!" .... and then immediately went into such specific detail at such length about one that it was obvious which one they wanted you to use as the in-game truth. Night10194 posted:Every game I've played in that had a Big Twist that turned out well had it be a thing that the PCs doing what the PCs do would still be important to the game. Find out you're in the remains of a sci-fi setting after being a fantasy monster hunter? Same skills work on a giant robot. Find out you're fighting aliens in a spy game? You still fight them with spy movie gadgets and action hero antics. Etc. It's great looking back at all the ways 7th Sea set up to invalidate its own swashbuckling pitch, like making an Age of Sail-esque game set on a massive supercontinent you could only traverse by water on rivers, and where sailing too far out into the open ocean beyond it was insta-death.
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Apr 10, 2019 17:02
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Halloween Jack posted:I've noticed that games built on a mystery--the PCs all have amnesia, or the underlying truths of the setting are concealed from the PCs and maybe the GM--tend to come out either too obtuse to be useful, or just kind of meh. (For example: Alas Vegas, The Demolished Ones, SLA Industries, a:state, Insylum.) Is it just incompatible with the medium? Is it incompatible with printing a rulebook anyone can read? I was half considering doing a (non-historical) F&F of Vegas; Warthur's article was really well written and an interesting read. The thing about Alas Vegas's big reveal - that Vegas is hell, which as written comes exactly halfway through - is that the author kind of admits in the designer's notes that the players will probably see it coming, but it doesn't matter that much they do, because its actual effect isn't so much about being something that the players solve advantageously as about making the players uncomfortable to drive exploration in the first half, and in the second half encouraging the players - who hopefully have had very disparate flashbacks by then in pursuit of abilities - to tie them together by giving them all a common question, ie, why they went to hell. Now, whether or not it actually supports that exploration is quite another question..
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Apr 10, 2019 17:04
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Related to that....Warthur posted:If you liked that effortpost I'll also take this chance to toot the horn of my similar article on Alas Vegas. It's kind of a companion piece to that one, given that Wallis was basically doing the two Kickstarters in parallel. Jeeze dude, this is a pretty nuclear take on Jenna Moran quote:However, I tend to feel that Nobilis is a bit of an Emperor’s New Clothes situation. The game has a reputation for being extremely, extremely clever, but on analysis I’ve always found that not to be the case; instead, it’s extremely, extremely obtuse, but obtuse in such a way as someone willing to suspend their disbelief could accept it as being clever. This is an issue I have with a lot of the design work of Borgstrom, or Jenna Moran as she’s presently credited on her work: in multiple products she has proven to be so intent on evoking a particular atmosphere she has entirely failed to offer a clear, concise, easily understood summation of what she’s talking about, which makes her games difficult to approach. Once you do make your way through the thicket, it often turns out that there’s not much of substance hidden behind the stylish facade after all – this was particularly the case for the flawed, over-fiddly wuxia RPG Weapons of the Gods, and I found that to be the case with Nobilis as well. Like, it's one thing to say that her games tend to bury practical rules in lots of atmospheric fluff writing, but it's pretty lovely to extrapolate that her stuff is overhyped and undeserved and she only really got where she was from having ~industry connections~ hyping her up as an auteur. (I don't know or care enough about James Wallis to know how well that assessment fits him.)
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Apr 10, 2019 17:11
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Nuns with Guns posted:Yeah, you can see that a lot in the 7th Sea twists. I'm sure some of the things regarding the mantis aliens and secret societies were planned from the beginning, but a lot of it reeked of trying to string together disparate clues that were dropped across a dozen books over a decade, especially by the time they got to the point of explaining what the true nature of God (Theus) was. They almost had a good thing going there, too, by going "Here's three possible answers!" .... and then immediately went into such specific detail at such length about one that it was obvious which one they wanted you to use as the in-game truth. Yeah, the cruft built up on 7th Sea is obvious even from the beginning. At the start, Sophia's Daughters were their mission statement - help Fate Witches escape Vodacce. Then they were 'help women achieve equality in the nations' which confused John Wick upon hearing it because women could already be anything they wanted to be anywhere but Vodacce - ruling monarchs, generals, pirates, whatever - and that isn't even touching on how they turned into the Super Secret Society who knew everything and could do everything.
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Apr 10, 2019 17:31
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Nuns with Guns posted:Related to that.... Wow, uh, gotta say (as someone who's played Chuubo's, and read the unfinished meta-RPG Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist, but who has not played Nobilis): the only person this hurts my estimation of is Warthur. Moran often writes like her settings should be self-evident, but she does produce legitimately fascinating, unique insights and games.
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Apr 10, 2019 17:53
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It's okay to not like things, even critically acclaimed things, and think that they're overhyped.
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Apr 10, 2019 17:56
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Halloween Jack posted:It's okay to not like things, even critically acclaimed things, and think that they're overhyped. I specifically said it was kind of lovely to say her reputation was undeserving and only existed because of her successful friends. Even that to the side I find that a pretty unfair and common accusation to level against women in male-dominated fields.
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Apr 10, 2019 17:59
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Halloween Jack posted:It's okay to not like things, even critically acclaimed things, and think that they're overhyped.
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Apr 10, 2019 18:00
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I think the only person with "malicious intent" in regard to Nobilis was Mark MacKinnon. "People who like this game have malicious intent" is a strange way to misconstrue accusations of hype. Hype is only malicious if you're talking about, like, Theranos or Lockheed-Martin.
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Apr 10, 2019 18:11
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Zereth posted:I think that was part of the joke. The thing you can most clearly pin being a "Commie" on if you know what a commie actually is is Friend Computer itself. Yeah. You live in a communist society where most people have a mutation due to the past nuclear war, and the only worthwhile thing to pass the time is be in a secret group of like-thinkers. You're all commie mutant traitors who need to report commie mutant traitors while trying to accomplish tasks that are semi-impossible to do.
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Apr 10, 2019 18:25
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Halloween Jack posted:I think the only person with "malicious intent" in regard to Nobilis was Mark MacKinnon. "People who like this game have malicious intent" is a strange way to misconstrue accusations of hype. Hype is only malicious if you're talking about, like, Theranos or Lockheed-Martin.
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Apr 10, 2019 19:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:I thought HackMaster 4th Edition read pretty well. 4th was the parody edition, 5th is the one being complained about (there was no 3rd edition). Kurieg posted:To be fair this is the illigitimate birth table... Forget malus, they always roll on that chart. Dwarves and elves never do, not because those things never happen apparently, but because they have such low birth rates they cherish all children equally or something. Gnomes, half-elves, and halflings roll on it 1 in 20, gnome titans and humans 1 in 10, half-hobgoblins 19 in 20. Oh and the reason that half-orcs always roll on the table is because for some goddamn reason they decided it would be a really good idea to make orcs barely more than animals that only reproduce by rape. moths posted:IIRC they brought in some clunky Aces & 8s mechanics, took all the humor out, and introduced this gem: Not all, just most, and most of what remains is kinda painfully shoehorned references, like the Silver Ball spell that shoots out a silver ball that bounces around the battlefield while the wizard is struck blind, deaf and dumb for the duration.
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Apr 10, 2019 19:12
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senrath posted:4th was the parody edition, 5th is the one being complained about (there was no 3rd edition). so 5% of hobgoblins are capable of love and affection wheras 0% of orcs are... and.. what the hell is a gnome titan?
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Apr 10, 2019 19:35
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"The gnomish equivalent to the spartans" according to the book. They're a more militant gnome variant that always has the Inappropriate Sense of Humor flaw, the only race that knows how to kick people in the nuts when they're on the ground, and I guess are so OP they had to be balanced with an XP penalty.
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Apr 10, 2019 19:37
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I for one am very concerned about the Moran-Industrial Complex and her insatiable lust for oil. Tea. Jenna's demand for tea cannot possibly be overstated. Anyway, the thing about Jenna is that she is absolutely, completely straightforward and has never attempted to be abstruse in her life. If anything, her books fail to communicate their meaning because she's too straightforward and explains unusual things in such simple terms that it seems like she's trying to use a metaphor when she isn't. If her books, which are generally as literal as possible, seem abstruse to you, it's because her way of processing data is very different from the average person, and that was what seemed like an obvious order to feed you the data in. Notably, she expects people to read a book from the start to the finish, and not skip around to find the bits they want (which as far as I know is how most people actually read their rulebooks). The result is frequently confusion.
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Apr 10, 2019 19:41
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Just assume the real answer is that orcs are slaves of the other races and thus structurally unable to meaningfully consent.
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Apr 10, 2019 19:45
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Nuns with Guns posted:Jeeze dude, this is a pretty nuclear take on Jenna Moran  Sub-Moran intellect detected!
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Apr 10, 2019 20:27
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Apr 10, 2019 20:28
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Speaking only to my only to my own trajectory with Moran's work, I blame the Hogshead edition of Nobilis for most of the notions that she was somehow "overhyped". And by blame the hogshead edition, I mean "blame online 'reviewers' masturbating about coffee table books", rather than the author or book itself. Like, that edition was the first one I became aware of Jenna Moran as an author, though I think I'd seen some of her work elsewhere before. And some of the vague commentary on Nobilis made it sound very much like my jam. So when it came out, I went on RPG.net to see if it sounded worth buying and got a barrage of reviews that basically told me the following: 1. It was a very pretty coffee table book. 2. My god, is this book such a great looking addition to the coffee table resting genre. 3. If you're having coffee near a table, and you're looking to properly frame that experience, you totally want this book to be resting on that table. I mean seriously, the first few weeks the entire discussion and review base of the book seemed to be either complaining that it was too expensive or extolling its virtues for coffee table decor. And any time someone asked in threads or review reactions about mechanics or setting or whatever, you got: "well...its just...there's so much to unpack" "I'm still processing it all, its so complex" "H-have you ever read Sandman?" As with most online bullshit, after the initial flurry of excitement died down, you started getting reviews that were actually informative, and I eventually did get nobilis some years later and quite liked it. But man, the initial fandom trying to tout it just did not come off well.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:30
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As far as incomprehensible rpg documents go, the ones by Jenna Moran do have a lot of folks talking about the emperor's clothes. I'll trust that there's a game in there once you boil away the fluff but it seems like it takes work just to find it. I see where whoever wrote that article got the impression from.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:30
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Desiden posted:Speaking only to my only to my own trajectory with Moran's work, I blame the Hogshead edition of Nobilis for most of the notions that she was somehow "overhyped". And by blame the hogshead edition, I mean "blame online 'reviewers' masturbating about coffee table books", rather than the author or book itself. I think that’s very true. The original salmon book was less well edited, but it was more plainly written, and looked unassuming.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:47
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:As far as incomprehensible rpg documents go, the ones by Jenna Moran do have a lot of folks talking about the emperor's clothes. I'll trust that there's a game in there once you boil away the fluff but it seems like it takes work just to find it. I see where whoever wrote that article got the impression from. I think there's a parallel discourse around Luke Crane's games often, along with specific ways the author intends you to read the book to "get" it, and considerations for the book as a work of art to examine. I don't think it's wrong to be disinterested in that approach though. There's plenty of other games out there that teach you their rules differently anyway.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:49
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the only rpg i've personally read that was written/laid out incomprehensibly was fragged empire
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Apr 10, 2019 20:51
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Serf posted:the only rpg i've personally read that was written/laid out incomprehensibly was fragged empire Marvel Heroic Roleplaying was the last game I read that made me furiously angry trying to read cover to cover.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:53
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:As far as incomprehensible rpg documents go, the ones by Jenna Moran do have a lot of folks talking about the emperor's clothes. I'll trust that there's a game in there once you boil away the fluff but it seems like it takes work just to find it. I see where whoever wrote that article got the impression from. Based on Chuubo I would say the issue is more that she writes in an overall conversational tone, so yeah going through the whole thing from start to finish-ish is a better way to approach it than the usual RPG manual thing. This is not unique, my habitual skipping of the first ten pages or so in RPG books hid a lot of cool poo poo in Ars Magica from me. I can say that she seems to be a lot more kind-spirited in a lot of this writing than is typical for this hobby 
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Apr 10, 2019 21:18
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I still don't understand chuubo's, and I wish I could find an actual play outside of the dtrpg book.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:27
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Luke Crane's writing is like getting ambushed by an obnoxious in-character renfaire vendor who doesn't understand that you're just there for the goddamn turkey leg, not his lovely performance. Burning Wheel might be an amazing turkey leg, but gently caress Luke Crane.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:28
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She also has genuinely unique (though very much flavored by the media she likes) approaches to a lot of the RPG space, and has thought a lot about the weirdness of What RPGs Are And Do, in a way that isn't quite the same as the experience-engine focused discourse of the Forge or other indie communities. Seriously, W-T-F is a great piece of thinking about games, and shared imagination-spaces, and the fundamental impossibilities of truly 'shared' imagined experiences. And how we, somehow, manage to have RPGs that work and that we can play, despite the fact that not only am I almost definitely not imagining the RPG-world the same as you are, we're totally incapable of confirming or disconfirming whether that's the case. E: I played in a Chuubo's game that was lovely, but also, I would really like to see a good Chuubo's AP so I can understand how play works because I still am not positive I grokked it.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:31
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FWIW I "get" luke crane better, though perhaps only because I dipped my feet in with torchbearer, I haven't read burning wheel. I backed his B/X hack for 1600s france and definitely liked the social combat stuff he posted there so we'll see how it goes. Chuubo's I just have no idea what a session looks like, what sort of things you do, anything. It feels like a series of chapters describing and riffing on a preexisting game more than a book actually defining one. (I know there are published play examples and they're on my to-read list but mostly I kinda checked out.)
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Apr 10, 2019 21:33
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I look forward to being able to tell people more about Jenna's new game, Glitch, where you play as the villainous Excrucian Strategists from Nobilis, and which is also pretty much a trial run for a new system for Nobilis Fourth Edition. It's very much a "Jenna Moran in the Age of Trump" game.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:37
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Rand Brittain posted:I look forward to being able to tell people more about Jenna's new game, Glitch, where you play as the villainous Excrucian Strategists from Nobilis, and which is also pretty much a trial run for a new system for Nobilis Fourth Edition. We're also gently but firmly encouraging her to write it such that Jo Q. Dungeongamer can parse and play successfully without feeling like they're wading through the toxic runoff of a whimsy factory, and I THINK we're succeeding?
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Apr 10, 2019 21:45
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:We're also gently but firmly encouraging her to write it such that Jo Q. Dungeongamer can parse and play successfully without feeling like they're wading through the toxic runoff of a whimsy factory, and I THINK we're succeeding? That's good. The one-page high-level system summary was a great idea that should be replicated, but it really was insufficient in the face of the sheer Jenna-ness of Chuubo's.
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Apr 10, 2019 22:03
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:FWIW I "get" luke crane better, though perhaps only because I dipped my feet in with torchbearer, I haven't read burning wheel. I backed his B/X hack for 1600s france and definitely liked the social combat stuff he posted there so we'll see how it goes. Chuubo's I just have no idea what a session looks like, what sort of things you do, anything. It feels like a series of chapters describing and riffing on a preexisting game more than a book actually defining one. (I know there are published play examples and they're on my to-read list but mostly I kinda checked out.) My introduction to Luke Crane was Burning Empires. I bought it from him at Gen Con. I figured it'd have cool setting info and be a fun thing to try. I also got the graphic novels it's "based" on. I like the graphic novels but hoooly poo poo I do not understand that loving game. Like not a single part of it.
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Apr 10, 2019 22:08
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moths posted:Luke Crane's writing is like getting ambushed by an obnoxious in-character renfaire vendor who doesn't understand that you're just there for the goddamn turkey leg, not his lovely performance. I have quested for many years to understand what people’s problem with Luke Crane and the way burning wheel is written is, but for many years I have been stymied. Perhaps my quest will never end.
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Apr 10, 2019 22:11
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jakodee posted:I have quested for many years to understand what people’s problem with Luke Crane and the way burning wheel is written is, but for many years I have been stymied. Perhaps my quest will never end. Do people have problems with the way the book is written? Most of the complaints I remember are about him as a person, and amount to "he won't do this thing that would really be helpful for me even though doing it would be very easy."
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Apr 10, 2019 22:16
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