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Mr. Maltose posted:It’s because all of those incredibly crunchy systems would be at best extremely tedious in translation from a mostly single player computer game to a shared experience at the tabletop. Sounds like a bad translation.
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Oct 19, 2019 09:52
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Okay, since you’re apparently hot poo poo at it, how would you take any one “crunchy” system in the Pokémon games and translate into something that is enjoyable as a tradgame mechanic. Broad strokes, I’m not going to ask for perfectly balanced math or anything.
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Oct 19, 2019 09:55
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Mr. Maltose posted:Okay, since you’re apparently hot poo poo at it, how would you take any one “crunchy” system in the Pokémon games and translate into something that is enjoyable as a tradgame mechanic. Broad strokes, I’m not going to ask for perfectly balanced math or anything. TMs as loot would slot very naturally into a WEDU-like ability structure. Pokemon already select from a series of powers that are appropriate to their type and basic function just by leveling, with TMs representing slightly more esoteric or customizable choices for when you're trying to accomplish something specific. Another good example is that Pokemon relies on a hard counter system that would be completely inappropriate in a system where you were locked into one class with one set of abilities, since in the latter context it would mean that certain enemies more or less invalidate the player's choices. But if your "character" in a TRPG is actually just one of several point characters and switching is possible (but with an opportunity cost), as well as also being something your teammates can help you cover, this is much less punishing and something that could be fun strategize around, much as it is in the games. Pokemon is also already built around fairly traditional assumptions of an "adventuring day" -- that's the entire point of Power Points, after all -- but in addition to serving as an overall limit on how much you can do without having to rest, the fact that it's per-creature encourages you to rotate your team and consider which one is best for any given situation rather than always relying on a single point character. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 10:01
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Berries and other held items that act as consumables that activate upon meeting a triggered condition (rather than requiring an action) is a cool idea -- admittedly one that would risk adding an unwieldy layer of bookkeeping, except that they're already wisely limited to one-per-character, which helps keep things from getting out of hand. Pokemon's entire core concept is built around random encounters that you can opt out of at will, but are rewarded for seeking out and engaging with (since they're a way to expand your team.) Meanwhile, fights that are important to the narrative can't be skipped, but aren't to the death, neatly bypassing the whole question of rezzes and how to deal with player death. The second generation games had wandering legendaries that you could track on the world map as long as you had encountered them at least once, which would be an interesting fit for a hex- or point-crawl like structure. It gives you a reason to revisit areas you've already explored, or to push ahead into more dangerous territory than you normally would to pursue them.
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Oct 19, 2019 10:25
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Starting the player out by having them choose one of 3 powerful, but simple and generalist options on the one hand, and giving them literally hundreds of options (and thousands of combinations of those options) on the other would be boring and overwhelming, respectively, but scaling up gradually from the one to the other -- with zero penalties for respeccing, although you can't do it mid-adventure -- would solve that problem neatly. It also means there is very little need to plan out your build from the start, a common complaint about high-crunch systems. Pokemon contests in Gen 3 and 4 are a non-violent but competitive minigame where your combat skills pull double duty as a way to influence a third party audience; you'd have to be careful to avoid a scenario where optimizing for one makes you useless in the other, but if the emphasis is on execution rather than charop this would be a neat way to introduce more varied alternate goals and win conditions than you could with just "combat but with a gimmick." And finally, Ditto in a TRPG would be absolutely hilarious and wouldn't require any more overhead than xeroxing someone's character sheet. (Although unless you wanted to make NPCs and PCs run on symmetrical mechanics, you might have to restrict it to cloning friendlies.)
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Oct 19, 2019 10:52
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's extremely SA Tradgames energy to look at an incredibly crunchy JRPG that's only made it easier and more rewarding to engage with the systems in question, over half a dozen generations of sequels no less, and say, "you know, the only part of this that matters is the presentation." I'm curious at how you leap from "this JRPG has done everything it can to make itself more accessible over several generations of sequels" to "and therefore, we need 900 pages of character options and system mastery." You want a pen and paper creature-breeding-and-dog-fighting simulator, not a Pokemon game. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 11:36
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Lemon-Lime posted:creature-breeding-and-dog-fighting simulator quote:not a Pokemon game. 
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Oct 19, 2019 11:39
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Lemon-Lime posted:I'm curious at how you leap from "this JRPG has done everything it can to make itself more accessible over several generations of sequels" to "and therefore, we need 900 pages of character options and system mastery." It's not like all the complexity/large amount of options have to be up-front. The video games don't ask you to make a full endgame competitive team from the get go either (or at all for that matter). Andrast fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 11:46
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:I want to play RPGs so bad but I cannot find a group here. I know they exist. You can probably find a group at Atomic Empire, or the bar Atomic Fern
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Oct 19, 2019 12:12
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's extremely SA Tradgames energy to look at an incredibly crunchy JRPG that's only made it easier and more rewarding to engage with the systems in question, over half a dozen generations of sequels no less, and say, "you know, the only part of this that matters is the presentation." It's incredibly RPG.net to look at the world's most popular media franchise, renowned for its adorable mascots, which has added more visual flair and character customization with each generation, and think "you know, the only part of this that matters is the crunch."
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Oct 19, 2019 13:07
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8one6 posted:So is my brain just broken or are the heritages in Pathfinder 2e just the most boring things they could make? Pathfinder’s fantasy is significantly less gonzo than the 3e/FantasyCraft grogs liked, which is the primary reason you still see people running actual 3.5 games. That said, the core rulebook has the most common ancestries, which is to be expected. There’s already a supplement with hobgoblins, plant people, and lizardfolk; and they seem to be placing a priority on getting more out as quickly as possible.
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Oct 19, 2019 13:24
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Mr. Maltose posted:It’s because all of those incredibly crunchy systems would be at best extremely tedious in translation from a mostly single player computer game to a shared experience at the tabletop. They're extremely tedious in the games. Slot only what looks cool and go to town it's Pokemon don't be That Guy
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Oct 19, 2019 13:43
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Getting knee deep into Pokemon uranium adventures
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Oct 19, 2019 14:42
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's extremely SA Tradgames energy to look at an incredibly crunchy JRPG that's only made it easier and more rewarding to engage with the systems in question, over half a dozen generations of sequels no less, and say, "you know, the only part of this that matters is the presentation." Otherkinsey Scale posted:It's incredibly RPG.net to look at the world's most popular media franchise, renowned for its adorable mascots, which has added more visual flair and character customization with each generation, and think "you know, the only part of this that matters is the crunch." /tg/: Well, perhaps I'd say the game should be about catchable sexy Monstergirls.
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Oct 19, 2019 14:46
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Going back to Digimon system chat from a page or so back, I've honestly been thinking of just having players be the Digimon themselves? Just go for wacky romps in a super 90s digital landscape. I have no idea how I would handle digivolutions but it certainly helps that the Digimon roster isn't that big and most Digimon have a ton of possible evolutions that could be handled in a way sorta like SotDL paths.
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Oct 19, 2019 14:47
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tuxedo catfish i think some of the disconnect here is that when other people are lamenting the 'crunch' of pokemon that fans obsess over they're talking more about IV/EVs or egg moves or natures; the kinds of things that's very very irrelevant to anyone not playing competitive pvp and in a lot of ways mostly just exists as busywork for people who want the 'perfect' charizard. no one's gonna object to elemental weaknesses or choosing powers or using items in a pokemon trpg
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Oct 19, 2019 14:52
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Brother Entropy posted:tuxedo catfish i think some of the disconnect here is that when other people are lamenting the 'crunch' of pokemon that fans obsess over they're talking more about IV/EVs or egg moves or natures; the kinds of things that's very very irrelevant to anyone not playing competitive pvp and in a lot of ways mostly just exists as busywork for people who want the 'perfect' charizard. no one's gonna object to elemental weaknesses or choosing powers or using items in a pokemon trpg Yeah there's actually a shitload of fiddly under the hood crunch in pokemon games and there's a not insignificant portion of the fanbase, generally on the older side, that's all about it. IV/EV was literally the first thing I thought of when someone mentioned translating pokemon to tabletop
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Oct 19, 2019 15:15
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IVs and egg moves are the game's reward for engaging with the breeding system. If you don't care about those things then you have not much reason to care about breeding. Which is fine! People can play Pokemon and just skip the breeding entirely, or skip the contests entirely, or skip the part where you pet and brush your pokemon, or whatever. There are a bunch of peripheral things that are totally skippable, but there are rewards for people who engage in them. The game is truly modular, and lets people who want high crunch have it and also lets people who want low crunch have that. That's the lesson that pokemon is trying to teach us that all the people in this thread arguing about low crunch vs high crunch are missing. You can have both in the same game! A game can have a simple and engaging core mechanic, and then can have varying optional modules for people who want them. (EVs are just garbage busy-work. They are a reward for dumb grindy bullshit.)
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Oct 19, 2019 15:21
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You know, y'all are way too focused on Pokemon when Digimon is clearly the better show. That's right. I'm bringing it back to the third grade playground.! And this time you can't beat the crap out of me for saying this stuff, Brad! But seriously, it probably would make a better RPG since it doesn't have the actual mechanics getting in the way since there is no unified mechanics and the setting is more built around this concept of beating a big bad that changes every season. Fellowship comes to mind.
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Oct 19, 2019 15:30
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Azran posted:Going back to Digimon system chat from a page or so back, I've honestly been thinking of just having players be the Digimon themselves? Just go for wacky romps in a super 90s digital landscape. I have no idea how I would handle digivolutions but it certainly helps that the Digimon roster isn't that big and most Digimon have a ton of possible evolutions that could be handled in a way sorta like SotDL paths. The part of Digimon that felt the most interesting to me was the humans and their growth (and their bonding with their adorable/less adorable monster buddies), which was something the other monster shows of the era mostly lacked.
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Oct 19, 2019 16:32
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Oh, we WERE talking about Digimon. Well, the only Digimon RPG that I know of is Digimon: Digital Adventures. 1d4chan link: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Digimon:_Digital_Adventures Tumblr link: https://digimon-digital-adventures.tumblr.com Downloads link: https://digimon-digital-adventures.tumblr.com/handbooks That said, makers of the NOT-FURRY-BUT-IT-IS-FURRY-AND-WE-SAY-IT-IS-BUT-THE-PLAYERS-DENY-IT-BECAUSE-ITS-A-GOOD-GAME-BUT-YOU-DON'T-WANT-TO-BE-BRANDED-A-FURRY-FOR-PLAYING-IT Ironclaw, has kickstarted Vital Hearts. It is built for Digimon. It is an "Isekai in a Computer game where players have a monster partner." They couldn't be more blunt about their inspiration without risking a lawsuit. Here is the link, y'all: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sanguine/vital-hearts-isekai-tabletop-role-play-in-augmente
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Oct 19, 2019 16:42
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:It's incredibly RPG.net to look at the world's most popular media franchise, renowned for its adorable mascots, which has added more visual flair and character customization with each generation, and think "you know, the only part of this that matters is the crunch." Go back and read the posts I was reacting to; I'm not the one suggesting "only" anything. Brother Entropy posted:tuxedo catfish i think some of the disconnect here is that when other people are lamenting the 'crunch' of pokemon that fans obsess over they're talking more about IV/EVs or egg moves or natures; the kinds of things that's very very irrelevant to anyone not playing competitive pvp and in a lot of ways mostly just exists as busywork for people who want the 'perfect' charizard. no one's gonna object to elemental weaknesses or choosing powers or using items in a pokemon trpg There's probably less of a disconnect than you might think. I love that stuff in the games, and a good Pokemon game would still be a recognizably similar experience in terms of character building and gameplay -- I'm just not under any illusions that a 1:1 port of Effort Value growth is a worthwhile use of a human GM's headspace. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 17:30
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People just have too many expectations and knowledge and stuff. Session one would just be like "I farm these grasses til I get a SHINY caterpie." "While he's doing that I walk straight to where Deoxys hangs out, I'm just gonna throw pokeballs at him til the 1% chance goes off."
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Oct 19, 2019 17:49
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Effort Values serve two purposes; one is mechanical customization (so basically just... ability score point buy, in other words) and the other is that it's one of several systems designed to quietly give the player an edge when they're playing their favorite. There's no reason to replicate grinding in a genre where you play for a few hours once every week or two, but you could collapse EVs, IVs, and natures into "you get a certain amount of free points to distribute at chargen" or, in the spirit of DTAS, skip the actual ability scores entirely but make natures a gloss for subclass/secondary stat priority.
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Oct 19, 2019 18:04
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Effort Values serve two purposes; one is mechanical customization (so basically just... ability score point buy, in other words) and the other is that it's one of several systems designed to quietly give the player an edge when they're playing their favorite. This doesn't contradict Brother Entropy's correct read that nobody objects to having stats, consumable items, or elemental typing/moves. Pokemon is an extremely crunchy JRPG that can afford to be so because a computer runs the dozens of complex equations in the background. It also conceals almost all of the math it does and has only begrudgingly revealed aspects of EVs and IVs in the most recent few generations. Stuff like breeding the most optimized monster with the best stats and moves is fine in a single player experience, but wouldn't work as anything beyond an abstracted background project in a ttrpg. The biggest burden I see developing in a tabletop adaption of pokemon is the level of depth someone would need to go into, both mechanically and narratively, in fleshing out each PC's team of pokemon, which can include up to 6 distinct creatures, each with their own personalities. And as someone that does play pokemon a lot, I do consider the feature of a full team of six to be pretty integral to the game. Some level of mechanical depth has to be sacrificed between each pokemon if you're anticipating to have a full team, even if you don't start with six pokemon right off the bat. You have to decide right away how to handle the leveling up, evolutions (through leveling up, stones, trading, certain in-game environment states, affection levels, specific stat distributions, branching evolutions, etc.), stat growth, moves learned (through leveling up/TMs/move trainers/on evolution/inheritance from parent pokemon/etc.), shininess, three distinct abilites, and natures. If you're discarding any of those, you're already sacrificing large chunks of crunch that hardcore players love to tinker with. This is without even delving into the elaborate system of breeding and cross-breedable pokemon species (which impacts moves, the pokemon's species, stats/moves/abilities/the pokeball they may inherit), pokeballs and the level of math factored into capturing each pokemon, combat itself (and all the associated factors like hit chance, move uses, environment states, abilities that have constant in-combat modifiers that trigger at a wide assortment of times, different battle modes [single, doubles, triples, and rotation], status effects, the impact of traded pokemon being unwilling to obey you if you don't have a certain gym badge, etc.), lots of little minigames scattered across the franchise, plus all that plot and story nonsense.
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Oct 19, 2019 19:15
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theironjef posted:People just have too many expectations and knowledge and stuff. Session one would just be like "I farm these grasses til I get a SHINY caterpie." "While he's doing that I walk straight to where Deoxys hangs out, I'm just gonna throw pokeballs at him til the 1% chance goes off." This seems more like a problem with the people making the system, since it should be pretty explicit and obvious that Video Game Things Don't Work In Tabletop. Like I haven't played the Dragon Age game but I somehow doubt people were quitting it in a rage after their DM refused to load their quicksave. Of course previous Pokemon games ran head first into this brick wall and it seems like it's pretty specifically because they tried to emulate the video game side of Pokemon more than making a tabletop game in the Poke-verse but yeah problem with the makers
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Oct 19, 2019 19:42
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Leraika posted:The part of Digimon that felt the most interesting to me was the humans and their growth (and their bonding with their adorable/less adorable monster buddies), which was something the other monster shows of the era mostly lacked. I'm sorry but Digimon is more interesting because it shows that Digimon do in fact have to poo poo like the rest of us, which was something the other monster shows of the era ALSO lacked
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Oct 19, 2019 19:55
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Darwinism posted:This seems more like a problem with the people making the system, since it should be pretty explicit and obvious that Video Game Things Don't Work In Tabletop. Like I haven't played the Dragon Age game but I somehow doubt people were quitting it in a rage after their DM refused to load their quicksave. You say this, but first edition Mage the Awakening had a literal Save Point spell and it was SUPER COOL.
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Oct 19, 2019 19:55
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PinheadSlim posted:I'm sorry but Digimon is more interesting because it shows that Digimon do in fact have to poo poo like the rest of us, which was something the other monster shows of the era ALSO lacked not only do digimon poo poo, if they poo poo too much they end up digivolving into a literal poo poo digimon if your digimon ttrpg doesn't have that as a mechanic you're basically a coward
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Oct 19, 2019 20:00
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Azran posted:Going back to Digimon system chat from a page or so back, I've honestly been thinking of just having players be the Digimon themselves? Just go for wacky romps in a super 90s digital landscape. I have no idea how I would handle digivolutions but it certainly helps that the Digimon roster isn't that big and most Digimon have a ton of possible evolutions that could be handled in a way sorta like SotDL paths. One of the key things about how evolution works in Digimon is that while certain evolution paths are more likely and established, hypothetically any Digimon could evolve into any other given the right conditions PinheadSlim posted:I'm sorry but Digimon is more interesting because it shows that Digimon do in fact have to poo poo like the rest of us, which was something the other monster shows of the era ALSO lacked Not to mention that quite a few Digimon are literally poo poo Brother Entropy posted:not only do digimon poo poo, if they poo poo too much they end up digivolving into a literal poo poo digimon True
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Oct 19, 2019 20:34
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:It's incredibly RPG.net to look at the world's most popular media franchise, renowned for its adorable mascots, which has added more visual flair and character customization with each generation, and think "you know, the only part of this that matters is the crunch." RPGnet doesn't really care about crunch either though, for the most part.
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Oct 19, 2019 21:16
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Splicer posted:Pokethulu
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Oct 19, 2019 21:29
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EVs in Pokémon also served a thematic purpose. They existed to show that a Pokémon raised by a trainer was more effective in certain ways than one caught in the wild. It meant that spending time training your Pokémon from level 1 to 50 created a different monster than one you caught at 50. It also served to differentiate Pokémon of the same species from one another, which meant Susy’s Blastoise might be have more HP than Jerome’s Blastoise, but his might be a little faster because of the different journeys they went on with their respective Pokémon. Natures also added to this but EVs predate those as far as I know. Not that EVs are something I think need to exist in a Pokémon tabletop RPG adaptation. I just think it’s a mistake to discount them as purely busy work when they do in fact represent something important to the narrative and premise of the game. It’s important to understand what work they’re doing for the game so you can potentially find another way to replicate that work with different mechanics if you believe its effect to be important.
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Oct 19, 2019 22:26
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i mean i'd still consider EVs busy work in the way they're obtained versus like, just being able to add some points to stats whenever a pokemon levels up
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Oct 19, 2019 23:13
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Covok posted:You know, y'all are way too focused on Pokemon when Digimon is clearly the better show. The fact that Digimon can talk does wonders in elevating them from "cockfighting monsters" to feeling like real partners of the Digi-Destined with character development.
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Oct 20, 2019 00:44
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I think move variety, type effectiveness and training are super important to the Pokemon brand. Games that are successful in the franchise tend to use these (the TCG, Mainline Games and to a lesser degree, Go) while games that are more likely to eschew them really underdo these (Pokken, Heroes, Duel, the minis game, the official ttrpg) As for Digimon, I've been giving a lot of thought into it, and I think the digimans should have evolution trees similar to talent trees, and learn attacks via leveling that give both tactical powers and narrative tags Ideally each mon would have a quirk that informs their roleplaying. Meanwhile the Tamers should have at least 3 values (similar to the Trek or Conan RPG) and at least one form of baggage or hang-ups. These would be how experience is gained, while battles would be for supplies or narrative significance in the feral digital world.
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Oct 20, 2019 00:47
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The day I found out there was a bunch of weird fiddly poo poo hiding in the background of Pokemon that meant using the wrong power could warp a bunch of numbers I didn't care about such that my cool plant guy would be considerably less cool was the day I decided I was cool with not playing pokemon anymore. I realised a long time ago that I want games where I can lego brick large concepts together, not do a bunch of accountancy on abstract numbers to make them actually function. Which is not to say I don't like crunch, but I want my crunch to be "OK what cool plant monster powers and abilities can I combo together to do cool plant monster things" not "OK I need to take (gently caress I don't even know) so I can grind SPD"
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Oct 20, 2019 00:54
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Libertad! posted:The fact that Digimon can talk does wonders in elevating them from "cockfighting monsters" to feeling like real partners of the Digi-Destined with character development. Seconded. Heck, the Digimon in Adventure were basically there to help the kids get over internal issues in their lives. I'm still shocked how much American T.V. left in tact given Fox Kids track record. The fact that the Matt and T.K.'s parents are divorced plot made it through completely in tact and still ended with the parents still divorced is crazy. Or poor Wizardmon doomed to forever be a ghost for doing the right thing, never able to reincarnate. And let's not even get in Season 3 a.k.a. "let's redo Evangelion but with talking monsters instead of giant robots."
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Oct 20, 2019 00:58
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Kai Tave posted:RPGnet doesn't really care about crunch either though, for the most part. Yeah, if you want to make a weirdly insulting comparison to an RPG message board for people who want to emulate the crunch of a video game because they see the rules as being a key part of the setting you'd probably go with "It's extremely the gaming den"
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Oct 20, 2019 01:02
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Moriatti posted:I think move variety, type effectiveness and training are super important to the Pokemon brand. Games that are successful in the franchise tend to use these (the TCG, Mainline Games and to a lesser degree, Go) while games that are more likely to eschew them really underdo these (Pokken, Heroes, Duel, the minis game, the official ttrpg) I agree with this. I think, for me, the core appeal, gameplay wise, of Pokémon is meaningful customization and personalization, combined with a strong elemental system. That said, I’m not sure how a designer would achieve that without a high crunch system, which I’m not sure people would want for their fun Pokémon romp. At least, not enough people to justify making and publishing a whole-rear end ttrpg I’m not sure what you mean by Pokémon Heroes, which is a movie, or “the official ttrpg” which I’m reasonably sure doesn’t exist.
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Oct 20, 2019 01:14
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