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Lemon-Lime posted:Between this and Band of Blades, I'm beginning to think you're not very good at reading. It took you this long after the forum's slobbery dick worship of Strike?
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Nov 9, 2019 17:54
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Arivia posted:It took you this long after the forum's slobbery dick worship of Strike? Jeez dude
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Nov 9, 2019 17:56
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Gort posted:Jeez dude It's true. Strike is a really myopic reductionist treatment of an RPG that shows how bad Jimbozig is at reading/understanding a lot of what other people get out of RPGs.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:04
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Arivia posted:It's true. Strike is a really myopic reductionist treatment of an RPG that shows how bad Jimbozig is at reading/understanding a lot of what other people get out of RPGs. Yes yes we got it the last time you brought your unhealthy, unending rage-boner against Strike and Jimbozig.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:07
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Slimnoid posted:Yes yes we got it the last time you brought your unhealthy, unending rage-boner against Strike and Jimbozig. excuse me i got my boner cut off a year ago this is an unhealthy unending rage-nipples
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Nov 9, 2019 18:09
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Lemon-Lime posted:You cannot make adjectives do anything that isn't temporary and fixable in a single action if you don't spend push dice. Right so if the players don't spend push dice then.... ???? Like, this is not from reading. It looked good when I read it. This is from actual play. It read fine and then played broken.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:09
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sexpig by night posted:yea when WotC doesn't try to get fancy with it it's probably the most easily accessible D&D premade setting out there still. If you've seen a fantasy thing you know what it is, elves like trees and nature, dwarfs are in mountains, we got a spoopy wizard nation and dragons fuckin about, you don't need to read a big lore dump to know what's what and that's nice to have as an option. I like my steampunky techno-magic post-war intrigue but sometimes you just wanna kill a dragon, possibly even in a dungeon.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:15
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MadScientistWorking posted:I don't know even by that metric it's not a particularly interesting setting either. I understand why you would like it but I feel Golarion strikes a better and more interesting balance than Forgotten Realms in terms of familiarity and not being completely white bread. I think the distinction is one in terms of editorial approach and campaign design. The best things about the Realms are small, supporting characters and details built up through years of play in order to create a living world around the characters. In contrast, the best things that Pathfinder hangs its hat on are big campaign tropes and archetypes, like "barbarians vs. robots land." Both are giving you campaign structures, but they approach it in different ways. Pathfinder is built for a single epic AP, and the Realms asks you to just go slowly, go gentle, and really live in this world.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:25
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Jimbozig posted:Right so if the players don't spend push dice then.... ???? They can't accomplish much in the fiction of the game then. The world they live in is a cyberpunk hellscape built to undermine them. The only way they can advance anything is by putting their physical and mental well-being on the line. This is hyphz-level of "Well what if they simply wish not to engage with the game rules or narrative, hmmm?" logic.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:36
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Jimbozig posted:Right so if the players don't spend push dice then.... ???? Lemon-Lime posted:You cannot make adjectives do anything that isn't temporary and fixable in a single action if you don't spend push dice. 
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Nov 9, 2019 18:37
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Jimbozig posted:This is from actual play. It read fine and then played broken. The game is clear on why players should be spending push dice, and clear that it's designed to work only if players go out and do so. If your players refused to spend their push dice, the problem isn't the game!  Your argument is literally on the level of "well, we played Go Do Things Outside: The Game but the players refuse to do things or go outside and the game didn't support that, so the game is bad." Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Nov 9, 2019 |
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Nov 9, 2019 18:46
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MadScientistWorking posted:I don't know even by that metric it's not a particularly interesting setting either. I understand why you would like it but I feel Golarion strikes a better and more interesting balance than Forgotten Realms in terms of familiarity and not being completely white bread. Eh, well, yes and no. In the Forgotten Realms, the Sword Coast is about as bland as a fantasy setting can get, but outside that area the Forgotten Realms has at least as many interesting and diverse areas as Golarion. Probably more so, in fact, though to be fair it's had a lot more time for development. But where Paizo does score higher is in that it actually makes significant use of more of the setting. There are plenty of interesting places with lots of potential in the Forgotten Realms, but they're either siloed off as separate campaign settings or, more likely, briefly limned in a standalone supplement or two and barely mentioned anywhere else, while the vast majority of adventures and supplements are set in the completely generic Sword Coast. Meanwhile, Paizo sets entire adventure paths in the more colorful outlying regions of its setting. So I don't think it's that the world of the Forgotten Realms as a whole is really any more "white bread" than Golarion; if anything, it's less so. But Paizo does more with the more interesting and exotic parts of Golarion, while the Forgotten Realms developers insist on focusing almost entirely on the most boring part of the setting.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:49
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Jerik posted:Eh, well, yes and no. In the Forgotten Realms, the Sword Coast is about as bland as a fantasy setting can get, but outside that area the Forgotten Realms has at least as many interesting and diverse areas as Golarion. Probably more so, in fact, though to be fair it's had a lot more time for development. But where Paizo does score higher is in that it actually makes significant use of more of the setting. There are plenty of interesting places with lots of potential in the Forgotten Realms, but they're either siloed off as separate campaign settings or, more likely, briefly limned in a standalone supplement or two and barely mentioned anywhere else, while the vast majority of adventures and supplements are set in the completely generic Sword Coast. Meanwhile, Paizo sets entire adventure paths in the more colorful outlying regions of its setting. So I don't think it's that the world of the Forgotten Realms as a whole is really any more "white bread" than Golarion; if anything, it's less so. But Paizo does more with the more interesting and exotic parts of Golarion, while the Forgotten Realms developers insist on focusing almost entirely on the most boring part of the setting. It should be noted that that's specifically a 5e WotC change to focus on the Sword Coast (North); it's really sad to see the Heartlands get little attention when those are (as the name suggests) the living, breathing heart of the Realms. We really missed a great opportunity for a 3e Western Heartlands book, but 5e has been playing in that area with Baldur's Gate at least. In 3e and 4e you got a lot of attention on the North, the Unapproachable East, etc.
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Nov 9, 2019 19:05
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https://twitter.com/rdonoghue/status/1153484678009171970?s=19 https://twitter.com/MikeRiverso/status/1158564238098620416?s=19 https://twitter.com/rdonoghue/status/1158564661366861826?s=19 https://twitter.com/carlrigney/status/1158575386294226944?s=19 https://twitter.com/TheatreMindPlay/status/1153498684983795712?s=19 It's not just me. It's not a Hyphz level complaint. Other professional game designers have the same complaint. The push dice economy doesn't work. It needs a fix. Period. The fact that it works for some groups is not good enough. Blaming the players is the copout of a lovely game designer. I mean yeah, sometimes things are the players fault - if they don't play by the rules, or if they set out to abuse the rules - but my group is not Hyphz's group. We tried to play it because we wanted it to be good and the system just did not engage. If the GM had a way to jumpstart it, that would probably help a lot, but the GM is literally powerless to contribute to the flow of the economy if the players aren't using it. Also, it's not like a 100% refusal, which I think some of you think I mean? Like, the game seems to assume that players will be spending a lot. What if they don't? What if they only spend rarely? Then the economy fails to function. The players didn't outright refuse to spend - they just didn't spend much. Which it seems like is what happened to Rob Donoghue's group, too. I've thought a lot about these types of systems and economies, but if you want to dismiss me, that's fine - but if you also want to dismiss the designers of FATE as just being bad players who don't want to engage the game, then you're obviously letting your affection for the system cloud your judgement. You are just wrong. The rest of the system is good and the plot map is beyond good, but this is pretty core and I can't recommend the game because of it. It just needs a few tweaks in this one area. Lemon-lime, you seem to take reasonable criticisms of systems you like intensely personally and often seem to turn things into personal attacks against other posters - I think you should chill out and realize that the poo poo you like has flaws and other people are allowed to talk about them.
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Nov 9, 2019 19:19
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Arivia posted:It should be noted that that's specifically a 5e WotC change to focus on the Sword Coast (North); it's really sad to see the Heartlands get little attention when those are (as the name suggests) the living, breathing heart of the Realms. We really missed a great opportunity for a 3e Western Heartlands book, but 5e has been playing in that area with Baldur's Gate at least. In 3e and 4e you got a lot of attention on the North, the Unapproachable East, etc. I almost edited my post to write the Heartlands instead of the Sword Coast, and I probably should have, because that's what I meant. I really meant not just the Sword Coast itself but also the Western Heartlands and Cormyr and the Dales, all of which have that same generic fantasy feel (and yeah, my bad for not saying so). And including those, no, this definitely is not specifically a 5e WotC change; the focus on these areas has been there since the beginning. When I mentioned the more interesting parts of the world of the Forgotten Realms, I didn't mean the Western Heartlands; I was referring to places like Zakhara (separate campaign setting), Maztica (ditto), Halruaa (barely mentioned outside of one 2e supplement and one 3e supplement), the Shining Lands (ditto), etc. And, for that matter, including the North and the Unapproachable East, which I certainly wouldn't say got a lot of attention in 3e and 4e either. (Thay, maybe, but there was almost nothing on Thesk or Rashemen or the Great Dale outside a couple of supplements.) The Forgotten Realms has always been focused on the blandest, most generic part of the setting; that's not a 5e thing. That being said, even if they don't get the attention that they maybe should have, those places do exist in the Forgotten Realms, and it at least deserves a little credit for that.
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Nov 9, 2019 19:23
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Jimbozig posted:Also, it's not like a 100% refusal, which I think some of you think I mean? Like, the game seems to assume that players will be spending a lot. What if they don't? What if they only spend rarely? Then the economy fails to function. I’ve found this to be a characteristic of most groups I play in, at least where we are playing longer-term campaigns with some meaningful character investment. Maybe it’s bad CRPG habits carrying over, but most of us hoard charges and inspiration and karma and potions and NPC favours in ways that ultimately aren’t all that useful. I feel like we’re definitely not getting as much out of play as we could, but the system isn’t grinding to a halt.
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Nov 9, 2019 19:28
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Jimbozig posted:Lemon-lime, you seem to take reasonable criticisms of systems you like intensely personally and often seem to turn things into personal attacks against other posters - I think you should chill out and realize that the poo poo you like has flaws and other people are allowed to talk about them. The takeaway at best is that Technoir doesn't clearly communicate the level spending it expects or the approach that's needed to make it run "perfectly" and that is a weakness of the game, but lol at your absurd checkmate of The Designers of Fate Agree with Me.
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Nov 9, 2019 19:37
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Jerik posted:I almost edited my post to write the Heartlands instead of the Sword Coast, and I probably should have, because that's what I meant. I really meant not just the Sword Coast itself but also the Western Heartlands and Cormyr and the Dales, all of which have that same generic fantasy feel (and yeah, my bad for not saying so). And including those, no, this definitely is not specifically a 5e WotC change; the focus on these areas has been there since the beginning. When I mentioned the more interesting parts of the world of the Forgotten Realms, I didn't mean the Western Heartlands; I was referring to places like Zakhara (separate campaign setting), Maztica (ditto), Halruaa (barely mentioned outside of one 2e supplement and one 3e supplement), the Shining Lands (ditto), etc. And, for that matter, including the North and the Unapproachable East, which I certainly wouldn't say got a lot of attention in 3e and 4e either. (Thay, maybe, but there was almost nothing on Thesk or Rashemen or the Great Dale outside a couple of supplements.) The Forgotten Realms has always been focused on the blandest, most generic part of the setting; that's not a 5e thing. Yes, you're right. The Heartlands and the North are the most developed parts of the setting, for various reasons (the North is really partially the Western Heartlands, as the Heartlands are really just "the two areas Ed set his home campaigns in", and one of those was Waterdeep and the North) including how well Jennell Jaquays *got* the Realms right out of the gate and completely nailed it with FR2 - The Savage Frontier. I disagree that the Western Heartlands can't be interesting - Irieabor as a mercantile/religious power is really underdeveloped, for example. It should be noted that The North has historically received a ton of attention and did get a 3e sourcebook, which I agree with you puts it way ahead of the Unapproachable East even (2 sourcebooks, 1 box set.) Something like Hlondeth would be great to show someone HEY SNAKE CITY THIS IS COOL poo poo IN THE REALMS and you have a trilogy of novels and two sourcebooks touching on it. Or Impiltur! Why did no one ever run with decaying kingdom riddled with demon infestations and ancient plots? That's an easy sell for a sourcebook, and George Krashos already did like 90% of the work for you. e: like if you don't read the section on Surkh in Serpent Kingdoms you have no idea that lizardfolk are uncommon but acceptable civilized folk in the Inner Sea, and are great "monstrous" adventurers in your games! Arivia fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Nov 9, 2019 |
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Nov 9, 2019 19:43
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Jimbozig posted:https://twitter.com/rdonoghue/status/1153484678009171970?s=19 all this post does is make me think those other "professional game designers" are wicked fuckin dumb
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Nov 9, 2019 19:54
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Subjunctive posted:I’ve found this to be a characteristic of most groups I play in, at least where we are playing longer-term campaigns with some meaningful character investment. Maybe it’s bad CRPG habits carrying over, but most of us hoard charges and inspiration and karma and potions and NPC favours in ways that ultimately aren’t all that useful. I feel like we’re definitely not getting as much out of play as we could, but the system isn’t grinding to a halt. Yeah, this is extremely common player behavior. If your system doesn't consider the possibility that players might be conservative in how they spend limited resources, then that is a design flaw. You have two choices - design an economy that works in both high-flow and low-flow situations, or design in ways to ensure the high-flow your economy needs. In Strike!, a conservative spending player or group won't be engaging as much with the action point system, and I think the game plays better with more active engagement in that system. But conservative play won't grind the gears of the game the way it does in Technoir when everything is fleeting and nothing is sticky, which makes it hard to resolve anything ever. Like it could be as simple as having a rule that at least 1 or 2 points per player in each scene needs to go to the GM, so they can spend them on something useful or they can forfeit them at the end. There, now even conservative players will want to spend and make stuff happen. Does that lead to other issues? Are there better fixes? Maybe - that's what playtesting is for and these are the questions a designer needs to answer. Edit: In a lot of games, the answer to the question of "My player is saving points for when they really need them." Is "Up the danger so that they really need them!" But in Technoir the GM literally cannot do that because they have no way to increase the threat without dice to spend. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 9, 2019 |
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Nov 9, 2019 20:07
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Writing an eberron game where Nior detective stuff bumbles into a fantasy tom clancey level conspiracy story and I was struggling because it's very very hard to not just go full metal gear with it. But it's Eberron so I think full Metal Gear is what it needs to be. When you think about it, The Lord of Blades is just Big Boss.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:11
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Alaois posted:all this post does is make me think those other "professional game designers" are wicked fuckin dumb I mean it really could just be a no fault "hey this wasn't presented in a way that made it click with some groups and does with others." Like you don't have to be actively antagonistic to a system to bounce off of some stuff. Like not every RPG is for every group, and there've been systems with some stuff I love that just fell flat for me in other ways. Although I am getting some weird flashbacks to folks talking about how you could game Fate or say Dogs in the Vineyard, or those games just didn't work because they didn't mesh with how some groups usually played RPGs.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:15
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Talking about Donoghue's game wasn't just about the fact that he has designed extremely successful games. Nor just about the fact that he blogs about game design and puts a lot of thought into systems like these. But also because he and his group have played a TON of different RPGs. This isn't a group who only know D&D and try to force every game into that mold. This isn't a group of newbies who aren't used to games like this. If his group had issues, and if several other commenters had the same issue independently, and if I had the same issue independently and years before those tweets, then you really have to seriously weigh the possibility that it's something the game's rules should address.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:23
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:When you think about it, The Lord of Blades is just Big Boss. Outer Heaven but just for Warforged since war is all they know? yes please
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Nov 9, 2019 20:40
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I thought Gloarion is just basic fantasy setting? There are interesting parts? Also, I am so...disinterested. On one hand, I do like playing games, but I also think its become an excuse just to hang with people. Now that I'm out of college, I find I have little time to hang with people and few irl friends to do it with. Talk about loving lonely.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:42
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Writing an eberron game where Nior detective stuff bumbles into a fantasy tom clancey level conspiracy story and I was struggling because it's very very hard to not just go full metal gear with it. I love every single part of this idea
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Nov 9, 2019 20:45
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Covok posted:I thought Gloarion is just basic fantasy setting? There are interesting parts? Okay so as someone who did this last year: go out and find new places to game in, that will make you new friends to hang out with.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:49
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Covok posted:I thought Gloarion is just basic fantasy setting? There are interesting parts? Well, "interesting" is a relative term. There are parts that aren't just completely generic faux-medieval-European fantasy. There's a nation that's the rump of a devil-worshipping empire; a nation ruled by mages who got power from looting crashed spaceships; there are of course the requisite fantasy Egypt, fantasy Arabia, fantasy Japan, etc. I wouldn't say there's anything really innovative about it, though, and I wouldn't say the setting as a whole is particularly interesting. It is for the most part a basic fantasy setting, yes.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:53
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My regular players aside, I have never really understood “when the player spends a benny the GM gets it to use later” mechanics. Is it meant to postpone trouble? To even out difficulty over time? The reverse - when the GM spends a benny the players get one - makes sense as a way of evening out the effect of GM interventions, and if the GM just doesn’t make any, no problem for the players. But the other way round, it’s implied that the GM must spend the bennies they receive in order to make the act of the player spending one be balanced, even if it makes no sense or is unreasonable.
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Nov 9, 2019 21:07
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There are bits of Golarion that are less generic than the others, like Irrisen. The lore for that country is insane. Some Pathfinder adventure path spoilers ahead Baba Yaga founded the nation, then had a bunch of kids, one of which she abandons in a Russian village who turns out is Rasputin. Apparently in this world Rasputin is the true father of princess Anastasia, and he resurrects her after her death and she goes on to be the ruling Queen of Irrisen.
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Nov 9, 2019 21:14
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hyphz posted:My regular players aside, I have never really understood “when the player spends a benny the GM gets it to use later” mechanics. Is it meant to postpone trouble? To even out difficulty over time? Part of it is because those systems are designed around giving all parties more narrative control than say a system where the GM is god and the other players are actors on their stage. The other part is tension. It's less a 'all things are balanced/symmetrical' and more to build a sort of dread and tension. There's a big pile of 'things can go wrong' the players can track.
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Nov 9, 2019 21:16
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hyphz posted:My regular players aside, I have never really understood “when the player spends a benny the GM gets it to use later” mechanics. Is it meant to postpone trouble? To even out difficulty over time? You are buying success now, and paying for it in trouble later.
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Nov 9, 2019 21:19
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:You are buying success now, and paying for it in trouble later. I know that’s the intended effect but games like that feel very unsatisfying for me. I’d rather just have my successes be successes, rather than being success at a price.
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Nov 9, 2019 21:22
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:You are buying success now, and paying for it in trouble later. Trouble later or failure later? Narrative GM bennies, regardless of how they’re issued, have the problem that there is no clear limit on what the GM can do without spending them. If they’re system bennies, that’s ok, but “get +3 on your roll now to let an enemy get +3 against you later” is usually a bad deal because the enemies you fight later will probably be tougher than the one you are facing right now.
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Nov 9, 2019 21:47
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Arivia posted:Yes, you're right. The Heartlands and the North are the most developed parts of the setting, for various reasons (the North is really partially the Western Heartlands, as the Heartlands are really just "the two areas Ed set his home campaigns in", and one of those was Waterdeep and the North) including how well Jennell Jaquays *got* the Realms right out of the gate and completely nailed it with FR2 - The Savage Frontier. To follow up on this, my players picked a less developed part of the Realms (Westgate) to play in. My stack of research materials, not including 200 digital resources, looks like this: 
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Nov 9, 2019 21:53
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thetoughestbean posted:I know that’s the intended effect but games like that feel very unsatisfying for me. I’d rather just have my successes be successes, rather than being success at a price. then you would not be playing a gritty neo-noir where the protagonists are expected to take a beating to go along with the wins they manage to scrape together, and thats okay but that's the game experience that Technoir brings to the table so if that's not what you want, you play a system that is not Technoir.
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Nov 9, 2019 23:26
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Zephirum posted:Outer Heaven but just for Warforged since war is all they know? Yeah. Turning the LoB from 'crazy' separatist to a guy going "Yeah I know a lot of you aren't adjusting to life outside of warfare well. Come to the
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Nov 9, 2019 23:30
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Alaois posted:then you would not be playing a gritty neo-noir where the protagonists are expected to take a beating to go along with the wins they manage to scrape together, and thats okay Yeah, gritty neo-noir isn’t really the type of game I go for. I generally prefer a bit more of a power fantasy, to be honest
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Nov 9, 2019 23:37
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Zephirum posted:Outer Heaven but just for Warforged since war is all they know? I mean, that's a very compelling source for the Mournland.
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Nov 9, 2019 23:52
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:he puffs on holo e-cig like ftfy
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Nov 10, 2019 00:06
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