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hyphz, have you considered board gaming?
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Jul 26, 2019 20:34
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Anyway, I have a new game out: Cold Comforts is a game about survival after an ecological apocalypse, about the bonds that are formed, and the lengths that people will go to in order to survive. Players take on the role of leaders in a small community and have to manage their emotional well being as well as the material needs of their community. Cold Comforts is a game for 3-5 players and runs over the course of a single session.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:35
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hyphz posted:That, as stated, would be fine. (And the character was actually angry from earlier, they mentioned having the Angry status, so losing control for that reason would be fine.) hyphz posted:But by this logic, because "detonating a nuclear bomb is risky", and because we did not take specific steps to weaken the bomb, if the bomb goes wrong it can end up killing innocent people even if we specifically surveyed the area to ensure there wouldn't be any within several miles.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:36
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Arivia posted:I actually have a cheat sheet I hand out to my Basic D&D players that’s the basic idea and guidelines on how to play the game. It prominently says that good plans don’t involve dice rolls. Combat is a failure state, it’s ridiculously dangerous and threatening. This might be useful to me if you can share it.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:58
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Zurui posted:Hyphz, you don't want to play Apocalypse World or anything based on it. You're not interested in any of the conceits of the game or any of the principles behind it. You don't want to cooperatively create a story where you are responsible for highlighting your character's flaws, vulnerabilities, and failures. Your view of gaming is fundamentally adversarial and simulationist. Thing is, I actually like all those ideas. My question is more how the GM, in this model, can answer the player’s fundamentally simulation-based question: “I look with my eyes. What do I see?” And at least here I get the feeling it’s not ok, either. Several unique and especially interesting games are now PbtA while most innovation on the tactical sims has stalled.
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Jul 26, 2019 21:09
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hyphz posted:Thing is, I actually like all those ideas. My question is more how the GM, in this model, can answer the player’s fundamentally simulation-based question: “I look with my eyes. What do I see?” the offer to sit in on my masks game still stands. it’s not hard at all because the gm is not the problem here. the player is
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Jul 26, 2019 21:10
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CitizenKeen posted:So K6BD Tom is writing a game about the last days of the weird west. It's been 10 years (jfc) but I remember The Good, the Bad, the Weird fondly.
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Jul 26, 2019 21:12
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So for people without the rules, here's what it actually says for Reality Storm:quote:Reality storm: You channel a destructive burst with your powers. Spend 1 burn to directly engage a threat using your powers, rolling + Freak instead of + Danger. If you do, you will cause unwanted collateral damage unless you spend another burn. And in the section where it talks about the playbooks in more detail: quote:For Reality storm, if you cause unwanted collateral damage, the GM tells you what it is—and you can expect not to like it. There's nothing that says another person has to be the collateral damage or that they have to mark a condition like what happened in that game hyphz is talking about - you could very easily wreck the building you're in and the consequences might be immediate (the building is going to collapse) or come down the line (the owner of the bank is pissed and goes on the news talking about "heroes these days" or whatever).
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Jul 26, 2019 21:24
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hyphz there is either something fundamental you just don't get about PbtA games and never will, or there is something you require PbtA games to do that they simply do not do and you refuse to accept that. Either way, you are spending a lot of time and mental effort trying to justify it and you really don't need to. Play something else.
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Jul 26, 2019 21:31
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FMguru posted:DC's various Jonah Hex collections should also be considered (but not the 2010 movie version, which was Catwoman-level terrible) Good call, ordered from the library. And Wild Wild West - I used to watch the TV show along with Brisco County Junior, which, as I type this, I realize is the ultimate in weird west.
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Jul 26, 2019 21:37
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BlurryMystr posted:hyphz there is either something fundamental you just don't get about PbtA games and never will, or there is something you require PbtA games to do that they simply do not do and you refuse to accept that. Either way, you are spending a lot of time and mental effort trying to justify it and you really don't need to. Play something else. Well, I do genuinely want to get it, though. I know I come across as knocking the games, but that’s because I get pushed onto the defensive. And as I said, the problem with “play something else” is that shared narrative games are eating so much of the RPG innovation sphere that it’s hard to do that without giving up a ton of interesting options. If I like DnD but prefer sharnar I can play Dungeon World. If I like Shadowrun I can play Hack The Planet. If I like M&M I can play Masks. But if I prefer simtac games and like Blades In The Dark, well, I can go jump in the lake it seems. No new simtac has attempted to fix the problems with stealth mechanics or plan duplication. The latest one to come out is probably Pathfinder 2e and that doesn’t even fix the 3D problem. You got your sharnar Gamma World, where’s our simtac Rhapsody Of Blood?
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Jul 26, 2019 21:47
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hyphz posted:Thing is, I actually like all those ideas. My question is more how the GM, in this model, can answer the player’s fundamentally simulation-based question: “I look with my eyes. What do I see?” The GM can reasonably expect their players to accept the premises of the game, the rules of how their characters work, and the fundamental RPG premise that we're here to have an adventure, not to intentionally try to undermine the mechanics and assumptions built into this game. What you are describing repeatedly is not a problem with the game. This game or any game.
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Jul 26, 2019 21:49
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CitizenKeen posted:So K6BD Tom is writing a game about the last days of the weird west. It definitely doesn’t hit the levels of Weird West that Deadlands does but if you haven’t already do yourself a favor and read Dogs In The Vineyard.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:02
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hyphz posted:Well, I do genuinely want to get it, though. no, you clearly, very obviously don't. if you did you wouldn't be 1/16th as resistant to literally every single explanation that is given to you that very clearly answer your questions to which you reply with the exact same headass rejection of the very basic premise of the systems
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Jul 26, 2019 22:18
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Lunatic Sledge posted:oh no, what is young Rick Jones doing on the gamma test site
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Jul 26, 2019 22:22
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DalaranJ posted:This might be useful to me if you can share it. Here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vldqsm766t1vgy7/what%20we%20do%20in%20the%20dungeon.docx?dl=0 Hack up as much as you'd like. Oh, the roles are from ten foot polemic's big house rule document. What I do to get people started (even people brand new to roleplaying) is a copy of this, a set of dice, and help them pick a pregen from the Basic classes (you can play a wizard, or a priest, or a thief, or a fighter, all explained in general game terms, and then demihumans are mixes of the classes.) It's worked a treat so far.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:26
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Alaois posted:no, you clearly, very obviously don't. if you did you wouldn't be 1/16th as resistant to literally every single explanation that is given to you that very clearly answer your questions to which you reply with the exact same headass rejection of the very basic premise of the systems I do get the spirit behind most of the answers, what I don't get is how they, once accepted, would deal with "I look with my eyes. What do I see?" Splicer's suggestion that, in the podcast's example, the description should instead have been that the energy blast exploded into shards and one of them caught the Legacy makes a ton of sense. It fixes the problem entirely, it does not suggest that somehow the Nova failed to see the Legacy standing in front of her. But the task of the GM in having to presumably buffer every detail that the PCs have seen, and then come up with a cost that does not contradict any of them, seems completely daunting. I mean, maybe he or others can do it but it seems tremendously tough, and if a GM who runs multiple systems and can sustain a podcast with a listener count greater than 0 can't do it it seems pretty intimidating to me. Equally, it seems bizarre to accept that the players asking the GM what their characters see violates the basic premise of the system. hyphz fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 22:36
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I realize I'm really late to Chinachat, but when I was researching Ming China for Farther East, I read Timothy Brook's The Troubled Empire, which is book 5 in a series of books on Imperial China. I haven't read the other books in the series, but The Troubled Empire was great, so the others might be too.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:44
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hyphz posted:I do get the spirit behind most of the answers, what I don't get is how they, once accepted, would deal with "I look with my eyes. What do I see?" No offense, hyphz, but based upon my readings of your typical gaming groups they're full of sadistic players who read the rules with the intent of "how can I be as disruptive as possible to everyone else?" As a result, you're basing your rules readings around presuming that the rules need to handle those who will misconstrue them into bad faith arguments. Any system has holes in it, and if some disruptive Munchkin wants to abuse the wording of the rules they will find a way. I can get that; a lot of newcomers have had their interactions with a system or tabletop at large tainted by bad sessions. As cliche as it may sound, playing with other groups, or even like Serf said reading and watching other people play can help illustrate how people would deal with the "what do I see?" question in actual play. And also to stop gaming with the problem players; no gaming's better than bad gaming. If you have 50 minutes to spare, here's an Actual Play of Masks by veteran tabletop gamers. I watched them play Deadlands a while ago, and they are good at injecting personality and role-play into the sessions to make them entertaining to listen to. I have not watched the whole thing, this was what I pulled off of a YouTube search, but they're a channel I recognize. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 22:47
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hyphz posted:I do get the spirit behind most of the answers, what I don't get is how they, once accepted, would deal with "I look with my eyes. What do I see?" If you're just looking, the GM describes what you see. If you're say trying to find a way out of a burning warehouse that would be "Read a bad situation". If you're trying to track a monster, that would be "Investigate a mystery". Let's say you're a monster hunter trapped in a burning warehouse (you just turned it into a burning warehouse (think any warehouse you've seen in films. There's racking, boxes of stuff, forklifts, potentially explosive things and so on) by driving a gas powered forklift at a werewolf), there's some more werewolves too *. Deciding that you're going to want an escape route you start looking around for a way out, which triggers the "Read a bad situation" move. We'll say you roll well and get to ask up to three questions. (Technically you get hold, so you don't have to ask them all at once, but for the purposes of the example, you're asking them all at once. quote:• What’s my best way in? What do you ask? *I can't remember the exact details, but it was in a game that The Lore Bear ran.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:55
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Roleplaying in the hell dimension is either having hyper-aware PCs which require the GM to tell the players precisely and exactly what is in a room or otherwise the GM is being cheap and unfair by springing them with something unexpected, or the entire session being filled with “what’s in the room?” “just a regular room” “do I notice anything unusual?” “roll for perception”
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Jul 26, 2019 23:04
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I also find narrative games more explicitly require a rejection of "you go, and your turn is complete, and then I go, then my turn is complete", etc. Like, D&D and stuff make some comments about that, but you really have to embrace it in games like *World, and Forged, etc. The whole Nova scenario assumes that Nova's player can say "stop, hold on, what's the sitch in the room right now? Where is everybody right now? Okay, nobody move or do anything while I take my discreet turn, and then Sally, you can go." Which is not how any of these things work at all.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:06
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Angrymog posted:If you're just looking, the GM describes what you see. If you're say trying to find a way out of a burning warehouse that would be "Read a bad situation". If you're trying to track a monster, that would be "Investigate a mystery". If you're using an investigation move that's ok (although a bit risky with the "best" issue). But if you can see racking, boxes, forklifts, etc. then you can also see where they are and choose to be or not to be there. And again, it's presumably down to the GM to work out where you are and if they have to resolve a result (like say a failed Help Out where "you expose yourself to trouble or danger without helping") allow for that. If you were helping someone who was nowhere near a forklift you're not going to fall over it. Trying to say "well the system isn't like that with precise positioning" makes it very difficult to create any mental image as a player. And it's not quite true either. I mean, I listened to Flavivirus' broadcasted playtest of her fantasy PbtA system and I was nearly exasperated with the amount of time spent asking questions back and forth about what the players saw in a given scene, with her apparently trying to avoid giving concrete answers. hyphz fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 23:07
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Speaking of superhero games, has anybody played Spectaculars yet? Just played my second game on Tuesday and it fuckin' sings.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:07
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Heliotrope posted:So for people without the rules, here's what it actually says for Reality Storm: And here's the Directly Engage a Threat basic move: quote:DIRECTLY ENGAGE A THREAT The big problem with hyphz getting their head around that example of play, is that the GM is doing a bad job of running PbtA. Splicer had a good suggestion to fix it. I would have insisted on an answer to "how do you do that ?" when the player just names their move. Never name your move, let your moves inform what you do and the GM will tell you when to roll the dice. To continue on with dealing with "what the eyes see", I'd say that PbtA games don't require the level of onerous detail that some styles of play thrive on, because the players don't have to mother-may-I for positive outcomes. The Nova's Reality Storm will always cause collateral damage unless an extra Burn is spent. That collateral damage will always be unwanted. The GM should decide the collateral damage based on the fictional positioning. If another player is over there punching a robot, they're a prime candidate for collateral. If there isn't one, a roof beam falls in or the place catches on fire. Personally, I'd shy away from having another PC take the collateral, after that happens the players' responses to "What do you do now?" are going to be boring or unwelcome. Escaping from a burning building with hostiles around is much more interesting. Trying to finish the mission in a collapsing building with hostiles around is even more interesting.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:13
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noot noot
potatocubed fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 23:15
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hyphz posted:Well, I do genuinely want to get it, though. I know I come across as knocking the games, but that’s because I get pushed onto the defensive. First of all, sharnar is an awful term (almost as bad as simtac). Maybe just call them "narrative" games? But this is a larger point that I'd like to address, actually. There are fewer crunchy, tactical games being produced in the gaming sphere in the last decade. We didn't "get" a narrative Gamma World, someone put a lot of work into developing the narrative tech to make Apocalypse World. And, at this point, AW is old enough that it got left behind (as did Dungeon World, which was once New Hotness). Apocalypse World Second Edition is a marked improvement and incorporates a lot of updates, much as Fellowship really succeeds where Dungeon World didn't. There's a lot of interesting actually new stuff out there too - if you PbtA blows your mind then you should check out Dream Askew/Apart. People are actively creating and publishing these games. We really are kinda in the golden age of RPGs. To loop back, there are tactical RPGs being developed. Lancer is just about to release; Pathfinder 2e is (bad but) about to come out. However, I feel like the negative reception of D&D 4th Edition, combined with the sheer amount of work required to create these games, means you're not going to see them be anywhere as near to the mainstream as they were in the nineties. I mean, you can only do so much after you've read GURPS Tactical Shooting, my dude.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:21
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*gouges eyes out with spoon*
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Jul 26, 2019 23:29
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TEML Together Everything Means Less
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Jul 26, 2019 23:31
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The cutesy weapon-shaped stat boxes make me want to die
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Jul 26, 2019 23:35
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See? That’s what simtac gets now. The great innovation is that you get 3 actions a round! And yes I know sharnar and simtac are horrible terms, I didn’t want to say narrative and simulationist because GNS is incomprehensible by now.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:37
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potatocubed posted:TEML trained/expert/master/legendary, the clarified proficiency system that applies to everything The sheet looks like a mess, but it actually shows how the system works: they give you a bunch of math, you do that once, and everything is good after that. It's a much more comprehensive, easier to read sheet than say 3e/PF1e.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:39
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Honestly it's a bit dense but it's not that bad? I know Pathfinder Bad but that's pretty much the same as the default D&D 4E sheet with some variation in the shapes thrown in to make it easier to scan quickly and keep track of where certain things are on the sheet. Could be a lot worse.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:39
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The sheer number of different shapes is making my eyes hurt.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:41
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There's only a couple of genuinely good PbtAs, and a whole lot of copycat dross that misunderstood how PbtAs are intended to work. My personal short list is AW, Masks, WWW and Monsterhearts (although I haven't played the latter). The other stuff I tried wasn't great but at least made sense stylistically (Dungeon World) or had some good ideas but couldn't pull its weight mechanically (Night Witches). The other stuff I've read seemed straight copies of DW where the designer just straight copied PbtA as a resolution system rather than a system to emulate a specific type of genre.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:43
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hyphz posted:If you're using an investigation move that's ok (although a bit risky with the "best" issue). But if you can see racking, boxes, forklifts, etc. then you can also see where they are and choose to be or not to be there. And again, it's presumably down to the GM to work out where you are and if they have to resolve a result (like say a failed Help Out where "you expose yourself to trouble or danger without helping") allow for that. If you were helping someone who was nowhere near a forklift you're not going to fall over it. So in the situation above, we know that your character has just leapt clear of a forklift that exploded, set fire to the warehouse and took out a werewolf. On the other side of the warehouse, your comrade, a literal Battle-nun is fighting two other woofs. You want to help out. You could dash over there and try to fight one of the woofs directly - that would be Kicking some rear end. If you have a ranged weapon, the GM could ask for an Act Under Pressure - you're not in danger of being attacked, but you could miss, or have to decide between taking the shot and diving out of the way of a bit of ceiling that's about to fall; on a 6 or less (things go to hell) you might find yourself face to face with the 4th woof (it's been earlier established that there's four of them), or find yourself separated as part of the ceiling collapses between you. Or maybe you just want to help them, you could say, "I'm going to shoot one of the lights down to distract a werewolf." You don't have to ask are there lights, of course there are. Or "I pick up a bit of debris and throw it at the werewolf" which would trigger "Help out". re: Positioning, there is nothing to stop people drawing a map - it just won't be a tactical squared map. You have this shared fiction, and anything that helps make it consistent is helpful. What you don't actually want to do is lay out all the details perfectly, because that doesn't leave anyone room to manoeuvrer in the fiction. re: The use of the word "Best" - it's mechanically enforced. If you act on the information given, you get +1 whilst the information is still relevant. Say there's a warehouse worker - they'd dozed off past the end of their shift, and now stumble out into all this chaos. You use one of your hold to ask, "What's the best way to protect the victims?" - I say, "Keep the werewolves occupied until he's escaped." you get +1 on anything that's actively occupying werewolves until that guy's escaped. You can do something else - maybe you're already quite hurt and decide that actually, you're just going to try and drag him to the exit. That's fine too, but you don't get the +1. To go back to getting out of the warehouse, You could just flat out ask, "Are there loading bay doors? If so, I dash towards them." only an unreasonable GM says No, because obviously warehouses have loading bay doors. They could ask for a Act under pressure as you duck and weave past the werewolves and out into the loading bay. Angrymog fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 23:50
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Tekopo posted:There's only a couple of genuinely good PbtAs, and a whole lot of copycat dross that misunderstood how PbtAs are intended to work. My personal short list is AW, Masks, WWW and Monsterhearts (although I haven't played the latter). The other stuff I tried wasn't great but at least made sense stylistically (Dungeon World) or had some good ideas but couldn't pull its weight mechanically (Night Witches). The other stuff I've read seemed straight copies of DW where the designer just straight copied PbtA as a resolution system rather than a system to emulate a specific type of genre. I'd toss Urban Shadows on there as a pretty good one with DW and NW, as the debts are such a great mechanic, but the rest of it is just decent.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:50
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dwarf74 posted:*gouges eyes out with spoon* There are three more pages of this lol
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Jul 26, 2019 23:55
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alg posted:There are three more pages of this lol I'm going to take a guess they include all your various feats, so they're a complete record. Like how a starting 4e sheet was 2 pages of sheet and a page of power cards.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:56
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As I’ve said elsewhere, the problem with that character sheet isn’t the information being recorded, but the way that it is presented. Everything has such equal weight that everything bleed together into a single messy pile of lines and text. There are no hierarchies of information, no flow for the eye to travel across the page, and everything is super crowded because every item has an equal amount of white space around it, not enough to offer a semiotic separation but enough to make everything bigger and tighter.
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Jul 27, 2019 00:18
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