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Yeah that’s the big problem with it, my friend said she wouldn’t even play in an all girl gaming group. Remove that and you get an awesome 70s gang explotation game. I really hope they let me hack it. The Stoner is the best playbook, sharing a bowl with someone to get information is amazing. He even works in Monster of the Week, if you use Cabin in the Woods & give him a lightsaber bong and mind control resistance.
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May 28, 2019 17:34
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Any suggestions on updating the OP? Edit: I just reread the original post and now I'm unsure if I knew how to speak English at the time, even though I'm a native speaker. Holy hell. Covok fucked around with this message at 03:32 on May 30, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 01:57
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So in Monster of the Week when you kick some rear end you generally deal harm and take some back. My players (fighting a melee-only monster, a gargoyle), said this didn't feel right to them, that they're using guns and should be at range. My thinking as MC was that in narrative (and describing it as such), the gargoyle closed the gap and clawed at them in return, as they were fighting in a relatively enclosed space (a church office.) I think this makes sense, but would you let players get away with using guns to inflict harm at range with no harm taken? Maybe someone using a sniper rifle or whatever doesn't take harm in turn, sure, but I don't necessarily think that uses the kick some rear end move. But then it would be doing a thing without using the move, and the whole system just kind of falls apart if you're not using the moves when you're doing them. Help?
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May 31, 2019 20:36
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You only trade harm if it makes sense in the fiction. If they’ve got the gargoyle dead to rights with a sniper rifle, sure, let them throw down without the immediate risk of harm. There’s still a non-zero chance that they miss or things start to go wrong such that they don’t have a safe sniper nest any more, but they likely aren’t getting ganked immediately unless the gargoyle has been established to be super fast or otherwise capable of engaging at sniper distances.
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May 31, 2019 20:51
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Arivia posted:So in Monster of the Week when you kick some rear end you generally deal harm and take some back. My players (fighting a melee-only monster, a gargoyle), said this didn't feel right to them, that they're using guns and should be at range. My thinking as MC was that in narrative (and describing it as such), the gargoyle closed the gap and clawed at them in return, as they were fighting in a relatively enclosed space (a church office.) I was gonna say this myself but it's actually right in the rulebook: quote:Don't always go right to rolling dice for kick some rear end. That move puts you in danger of harm as well as your enemy. If you can find a way to attack without putting yourself in danger, then you can inflict harm on the enemy without suffering any yourself (and without needing to succeed on a roll). As you guessed the kick some rear end move should be used when you're exposing yourself to danger in order to deal harm. If you've found some way to deal harm without exposing yourself to danger (which presumably required other rolls/risks to set up) you're not triggering the move. That said, in the situation you described I would absolutely force them to roll kick some rear end. A church office is tiny and aiming+firing a gun is not as easy as John Wick makes it look. PbtA moves aren't D&D combat rounds.
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May 31, 2019 20:56
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That's what "harm as established" means, incidentally. If you're using a flamethrower against a fire elemental, the flamethrower might say it deals 3-harm, but in this case the harm should obviously be much less (or nothing). Similarly, a rock might normally deal like 1-harm, but if you drop it on somebody from a plane...
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May 31, 2019 20:58
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A lot depends on the fiction established in the scene. As said above, if they have the gargoyle dead to rights and they know their way around firearms, let 'em deal their damage with no roll, it's shooting fish in a barrel, no problem. Or you could also have them roll Act Under Pressure - just because the gargoyle isn't in a position to harm them, that doesn't mean they're free from consequences. What's behind the wall that's getting riddled with bullets? Who can hear these gunshots and what would they do about it? If they're untrained in this kind of thing, can they keep their aim steady under the stress of the loud gunfire and the strobing muzzle flashes and oh my god why does it have so many teeth why won't it just DIE
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Jun 1, 2019 00:50
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This is where Monster of the Week suffers from not having a direct equivalent to AW's go aggro, as that is the move you generally make for one-sided harm (when you're not just suckering someone and inflicting harm, that is).
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Jun 1, 2019 16:15
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So I've hit on the hook for my Masks game. Drawing from the dimly remembered comics Noble Causes and Dynamo 5, the gimmick is everybody will be the newest generation of a superhero family. Do any playbooks leap out at people as being untenable for such a thing? The only one that immediately doesn't seem to work is the Janus... but now that I think about that, as long as it's not their family they're hiding from (instead focusing on school and 'real' life) then that could work. The Outsider might be odd too, but... adoption? Foster kid?
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Jun 10, 2019 14:26
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Dawgstar posted:So I've hit on the hook for my Masks game. Drawing from the dimly remembered comics Noble Causes and Dynamo 5, the gimmick is everybody will be the newest generation of a superhero family. Do any playbooks leap out at people as being untenable for such a thing? Second-generation outsider back from being raised in the traditions of their people, or the super-family is itself the outsider faction and their powers were too unstable to let them grow up anywhere but the family science dome. I could make a pretty good case that you'd play Astra First as an Outsider.
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Jun 10, 2019 16:38
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Miss Martian is explicitly Outsider inspiration, and she is the second generation 'young Martian Manhunter'.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:36
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Superhero family for the Janus could be trying to get out of the profession, or don't let their kids start until they've hit 18, something like that. Traditional sidekick family but they want to be a proper hero.
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Jun 11, 2019 08:32
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GodFish posted:Superhero family for the Janus could be trying to get out of the profession, or don't let their kids start until they've hit 18, something like that. Traditional sidekick family but they want to be a proper hero. Yeah, I like that. I really like the idea of the Beacon as the who got skipped when it came to powers (at least flashy ones) and are basically the "which one are you?"
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Jun 11, 2019 11:20
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Dawgstar posted:So I've hit on the hook for my Masks game. Drawing from the dimly remembered comics Noble Causes and Dynamo 5, the gimmick is everybody will be the newest generation of a superhero family. Do any playbooks leap out at people as being untenable for such a thing? Plenty of heroes who fulfill the Outsider role had children or "relatives" of some kind. Aquaman is king of a dynasty, Vision literally built a family and has a "brother" also built by Ultron. Sometimes superheroes even turn out to have children or other relatives who are way weirder than them, like how the Hawkman dynasty keeps producing weird feathered fuckers like Northwind.
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Jun 11, 2019 16:00
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Halloween Jack posted:Vision literally built a family and has a "brother" also built by Ultron There are few things in this life that are less comic book than the Pym family tree.    It's a wonderful mess and I love it.
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Jun 11, 2019 18:13
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What's the consensus on Masks: a New Generation? I'm reading it for the first time and finding it VERY good. The only thing I'm having trouble to grok is the combat with Conditions as "hit points". It feels really abstract. What are your experiences or impressions on it?
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Jun 12, 2019 11:19
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lessavini posted:What's the consensus on Masks: a New Generation? I'm reading it for the first time and finding it VERY good. The only thing I'm having trouble to grok is the combat with Conditions as "hit points". It feels really abstract. I've had much more success running it than, for example, Night Witches, which is an interesting premise marred by a bad mechanical implementation of the rules.
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Jun 12, 2019 13:22
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If you're down with idea of teenage supers struggling to come into their own, Masks succeeds pretty well with a few hitches along the way when it comes to later playbooks.
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Jun 12, 2019 13:25
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lessavini posted:What's the consensus on Masks: a New Generation? I'm reading it for the first time and finding it VERY good. The only thing I'm having trouble to grok is the combat with Conditions as "hit points". It feels really abstract. Masks, like all PBTA games, is very specific about what it's trying to emulate, and that is teenage superhero coming of age stories. In those, fights generally aren't about "Who's got the stronger power set?" but "Who's got more to prove?" and "Who's in a better mental state?" As far as running combat, the structure and pacing is similar to "traditional" PBTA combat, what with it lacking turns and having the GM shift the spotlight as needed. One of the "tricks" to keep in mind is to make sure there's more than one thing happening in a fight. If you just have a one person vs. the team, fights can grind down to "I hit them, they hit us, I hit him" which doesn't make for an interesting fight. So, add teams of villains, minions, and various collateral damage to keep fights interesting, and make sure you use the Condition moves for NPCs when they take conditions. I've seen it overlooked before, and they really make combat (and non-combat!) flow. As an extension of not being interested in the nitty-gritty of superhero fights, it's also not interested in the nuts and bolts of power sets. If you're a hacker, you can hack it. If you've got superstrength, it doesn't give you a max weight you can bench. Even the powers listed in the playbooks are technically optional, but they are thematically appropriate for playbooks. But, if someone has their heart set on a power that isn't listed, it's usually fine to just go with it.
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Jun 12, 2019 13:40
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Tekopo posted:I've had much more success running it than, for example, Night Witches, which is an interesting premise marred by a bad mechanical implementation of the rules.  this is disappointing to hear. I've heard one podcast playthrough and it sounded pretty good, but they didn't really dig into the meat of the system.
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Jun 12, 2019 17:40
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To be fair, I think the issues are only apparent when taking the campaign as a whole. It’s mostly to do with character advancement and the repetitiveness of missions.
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Jun 12, 2019 18:23
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Character advancement is something that you have to be cognizant of in any PbtA game anyway. The advancement arc in vanilla Apocalypse World moves at a pretty breakneck pace, and if you're looking for a longer-playing campaign you'll actually need to take steps to slow it down. Otherwise, by about 10 sessions in everyone has changed playbooks or has multiple characters going and the tightly-focused narrative you started with has sprawled into something very different. Not bad, mind, just different.
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Jun 12, 2019 18:49
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Something I feel is baked into most PBTA is that, the stories these game sessions represent aren't for a long term game. This came up when I was talking to the person running the Pathfinder Playtest game with a custom world I got invited to, and he was talking about how he wanted to really get back to being a player, but wanted a full campaign he could really invest his time and energy into, with years of story. And I feel that part of what I was trying to sell him on is that yes, PBTA tends to run small batches (mine are usually 3-5 sessions) but the amount of depth you can get into with them is more than enough to really enjoy I feel. This may be true of any game, but with PBTA, it's intrinsic to both the rules as well as the mechanics that you run small deep stories, a mini-series on TV instead of an ongoing broadcast that eventually shrivels up and dies.
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Jun 12, 2019 20:09
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RedMagus posted:Something I feel is baked into most PBTA is that, the stories these game sessions represent aren't for a long term game. This came up when I was talking to the person running the Pathfinder Playtest game with a custom world I got invited to, and he was talking about how he wanted to really get back to being a player, but wanted a full campaign he could really invest his time and energy into, with years of story. And I feel that part of what I was trying to sell him on is that yes, PBTA tends to run small batches (mine are usually 3-5 sessions) but the amount of depth you can get into with them is more than enough to really enjoy I feel. This may be true of any game, but with PBTA, it's intrinsic to both the rules as well as the mechanics that you run small deep stories, a mini-series on TV instead of an ongoing broadcast that eventually shrivels up and dies. It's sort of following the fiction they're inspired by. Path, by way of D&D took inspiration from multi-volume fantasy epics who series could fill a shelf on its own while games like Fellowship or even Dungeon World tend towards more limited stories as reflected by their inspiration. There is something to be said about being attached to a character and a world and seeing their adventures in almost perpetuity, provided the connection remains and the adventures remain interesting. That's part of the desire to see a show keep running despite some of the steam running out from their arc.
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Jun 12, 2019 20:23
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Apocalypse World makes for great campaign play because character retirement is baked into the rules, so you can continue to play in the world you've created while keeping the characters and plots fresh. Night Witches suffers from the designers not quite grokking what makes PbtA tick. Like, they understand the mechanics but not why moves are different from discrete game actions or how to make the setup for each move as interesting as the payoff. Also, the campaign is just loving...exhausting.
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Jun 12, 2019 21:23
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My advice for Masks is to, when possible, always use teams of villains because PCs can chew through them like its nothing. Its also more interesting to divide people up and put them into their own smaller groups so that the spotlight becomes more meaningful for each.
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Jun 12, 2019 21:33
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Thanks for the tips on Masks, gents. When a player inflicts a condition on an opponent NPC, who chooses the condition, the player or the GM? Can the GM veto and ask for better "fictional positioning" if, say, a hero doesn't have an appropriate power to deal with an opponent in that moment? And last but not least, how accomodating the game is to an X-men "mutants class" like premise instead of Halcyon city? I admit not being that a fan of Supers (weird, I know) and the only I've read as a kid was the X-men so they're more familiar to me. RedMagus posted:Something I feel is baked into most PBTA is that, the stories these game sessions represent aren't for a long term game. This came up when I was talking to the person running the Pathfinder Playtest game with a custom world I got invited to, and he was talking about how he wanted to really get back to being a player, but wanted a full campaign he could really invest his time and energy into, with years of story. And I feel that part of what I was trying to sell him on is that yes, PBTA tends to run small batches (mine are usually 3-5 sessions) but the amount of depth you can get into with them is more than enough to really enjoy I feel. This may be true of any game, but with PBTA, it's intrinsic to both the rules as well as the mechanics that you run small deep stories, a mini-series on TV instead of an ongoing broadcast that eventually shrivels up and dies. *don't know how it fares with the less Playbook-oriented games (like Dungeon World and The Sprawl) as they seem more "traditional". Maybe they're better fitted to long campaigns. lessavini fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 22:19
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Zurui posted:Apocalypse World makes for great campaign play because character retirement is baked into the rules, so you can continue to play in the world you've created while keeping the characters and plots fresh.
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Jun 12, 2019 23:49
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lessavini posted:When a player inflicts a condition on an opponent NPC, who chooses the condition, the player or the GM? The GM, although they might be able to influence which the NPC takes if they select impress/dismay/frighten. lessavini posted:Can the GM veto and ask for better "fictional positioning" if, say, a hero doesn't have an appropriate power to deal with an opponent in that moment? Yeah, in order to be able to do Directly Engage or Unleash you need to be able to actually affect the person you're using it on - it's totally fair to say "You can't hurt them/they're able to shrug off your attempts to stop them" if the opponent is far more powerful then them. This can vary based on what playbook the PC is. lessavini posted:And last but not least, how accommodating the game is to an X-men "mutants class" like premise instead of Halcyon city? I admit not being that a fan of Supers (weird, I know) and the only I've read as a kid was the X-men so they're more familiar to me. Have you looked at the Unbound supplement? It has a playset for setting the game in a school for supers.
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Jun 13, 2019 00:14
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"If you can't do it you can't do it" is kind of an unstated opposite of "To do it, do it". My guess is it's not such a prominent feature in AW, because by and large people are human baseline, but in a comicbook game, yeah; the person with no superpowers can't outrun a Flash type villain or hold up a collapsing skyscraper. That said I'd be forgiving about other things; the whole "mama bear lifting up cars" thing should apply for desperate effort and Unleashing is nothing but that, and if the guy with no real powers can get a perk for desperate effort, it's only fair the people with powers do too.
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Jun 13, 2019 07:50
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Nice point, Spectralent. "If you can't do it, you can't do it" should be in the books, exactly as that.Dawgstar posted:If you're down with idea of teenage supers struggling to come into their own, Masks succeeds pretty well with a few hitches along the way when it comes to later playbooks.
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Jun 13, 2019 23:59
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lessavini posted:What's the problem with later playbooks? I'm taking a look at some and finding em really cool (the Harbinger comes to mind). Some are mechanically kinda bad (like the Brain). Reformed feels like the worst. Scion does its gig better.
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Jun 14, 2019 01:01
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The harbinger is good until you realize almost all of its moves are just stat replacement. I like the brain and its moves are really great.
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Jun 14, 2019 01:49
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Heliotrope posted:Yeah, in order to be able to do Directly Engage or Unleash you need to be able to actually affect the person you're using it on - it's totally fair to say "You can't hurt them/they're able to shrug off your attempts to stop them" if the opponent is far more powerful then them. This can vary based on what playbook the PC is. I'd disagree on this, actually. Take a look at Suck it, Domitian for instance. That triggers, according to the corebook, when the odds are against you or you're up against a terrifying threat. How is the Beacon supposed to get any use out of their Directly Engage replacer if you're vetoing their ability to engage, say, terrifying threats? Keep in mind that you're not required to be causing actual physical harm when you fight. Peppering an invincible war god with arrows isn't going to draw blood, sure, but it might make them angry. Maybe the Beacon stands strong, despite getting beat to poo poo, and hit them with an emotional appeal that leaves them feeling guilty. Playbooks have different assumed power levels, but that should be something that flavors the narrative surrounding your approach to a move instead of boxing you out of the game entirely.
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Jun 14, 2019 08:15
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Tricky posted:I'd disagree on this, actually. Take a look at Suck it, Domitian for instance. That triggers, according to the corebook, when the odds are against you or you're up against a terrifying threat. How is the Beacon supposed to get any use out of their Directly Engage replacer if you're vetoing their ability to engage, say, terrifying threats? Having odds against you and/or being up against a terrifying threat doesn't mean the Beacon can't hurt them. Like a mob of dangerous henchmen could be odds against you or a super skilled assassin might be a terrifying threat, and it could go bad if you miss but you can Directly Engage them. I'm talking about stuff like the invincible war god, who shouldn't be showing up all the time. But when he does, "Beacon, you can't do anything to hurt this guy. How does that make you feel?" fits with their themes and issues. Likewise, the Nova has "Give them a threat only they can handle" as one of the GM moves - I'd be surprised if a Beacon could DE something on that level of power. Tricky posted:Keep in mind that you're not required to be causing actual physical harm when you fight. Peppering an invincible war god with arrows isn't going to draw blood, sure, but it might make them angry. Maybe the Beacon stands strong, despite getting beat to poo poo, and hit them with an emotional appeal that leaves them feeling guilty. The text on Directly Engage specifically says it's about physically fighting. quote:Directly engaging a threat is the move for straightforwardly duking it out with something—a monster, a villain, whatever. If you’re playing a bit of the ropea-dope, hoping to tire an enemy out, you’re not directly engaging, so the move isn’t triggered. If you’re up against someone or something that isn’t actually all that dangerous to you, then they’re not a threat, and the move isn’t triggered. There's also a section on running fights where it talks about following the fiction and threats and attacks from the PCs: quote:Third, follow the fiction. If the PCs nail the villain with a snide insult and make them start feeling a particular condition, mark off that condition and have the villain make a condition move. If the villain would be largely immune to some kind of threat or attack from the PCs, let them know—the villain just shrugs it off. Tricky posted:Playbooks have different assumed power levels, but that should be something that flavors the narrative surrounding your approach to a move instead of boxing you out of the game entirely. I wouldn't say a Beacon would be boxed out entirely even if they can't hurt the villain. They can read the villain and find useful information (or learn how to gain Influence on them), they can comfort/support their teammates (hell, they can comfort/support the villain if they want them to open up so they can find out more about them), they can Assess and learn more stuff they can pass on to their teammates, if they got Influence on the villain they have a guaranteed shot at Provoking them or they can use it to inflict a condition on them, and there's also spending team. I'm not saying every enemy that's tough is immediately beyond the Beacon's capacity, I'm saying the occasional really dangerous villain who certain PCs might not be able to Directly Engage is fine.
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Jun 14, 2019 09:33
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Dawgstar posted:Some are mechanically kinda bad (like the Brain). Reformed feels like the worst. Scion does its gig better. Golden Bee posted:The harbinger is good until you realize almost all of its moves are just stat replacement. It seems to me the main problem of these advanced playbooks is their narratives being too far from the core "coming of age" theme of the game, more than any mechanical flaw.
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Jun 14, 2019 11:36
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Heliotrope posted:I wouldn't say a Beacon would be boxed out entirely even if they can't hurt the villain. They can read the villain and find useful information (or learn how to gain Influence on them), they can comfort/support their teammates (hell, they can comfort/support the villain if they want them to open up so they can find out more about them), they can Assess and learn more stuff they can pass on to their teammates, if they got Influence on the villain they have a guaranteed shot at Provoking them or they can use it to inflict a condition on them, and there's also spending team. Okay, but here's a hypothetical: the ongoing narrative has been pushing the Beacon to feel extremely Dangerous and that's now by far their best label. You then put them in a situation where they can't use that at all. It's gonna feel really bad on a mechanical level, even if it may be fitting when divorced from the mechanical side of things. Like, fundamentally, this is a system where label shifts can lead to playbooks evolving in different directions from scene to scene, let alone session to session. Why should character development be punished with GM gotchas? Look at drives as another example. They are, by and large, about the Beacon punching above their weight class and doing things that people think they can't handle. If you establish something as objectively being outside their reach, then the haters are right. Do you see how that flavors their narrative in a really lovely way?
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Jun 14, 2019 18:34
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Off the top of my head, I can think of plenty of ways for the Beacon to be Dangerous with their power set options. Green Arrow has taken out Superman. Batman killed Darkseid. Isn't phasing one of their options? Messy.
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Jun 14, 2019 20:08
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Tricky posted:Look at drives as another example. They are, by and large, about the Beacon punching above their weight class and doing things that people think they can't handle. If you establish something as objectively being outside their reach, then the haters are right. Do you see how that flavors their narrative in a really lovely way? I mean, the haters are right: the beacon does not have superpowers and they're inherently unsuitable to have a punch out with Darkseid. The Beacon earns their place with cunning, courage, the support of their friends, and all that stuff, not by suddenly working out how to enter Super Saiyan 2 and being able to go 1-1 with Vegeta.
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Jun 14, 2019 20:09
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Did I say they would be having a punchfest with Vegeta? No. In fact, if you actually bother to read some of the things I have posted in this very thread, I said earlier:quote:Playbooks have different assumed power levels, but that should be something that flavors the narrative surrounding your approach to a move instead of boxing you out of the game entirely. You want to know who's hosed up Vegeta before? Yagirobe. That's what a Beacon engage might look like in that situation.
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Jun 14, 2019 20:15
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