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I've always found it weird that Armour is a thing in PbtA, since it directly contradicts the principle of "always fail forward". When I was running Dungeon World I started off giving every monster 1-2 Armour like they have in the book, but later I started removing it and just giving them a couple extra hit points instead. It cut down on bookkeeping and meant that a move never resolved as "nothing happens, I guess".
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Nov 22, 2019 07:15
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Sailor Viy posted:I've always found it weird that Armour is a thing in PbtA, since it directly contradicts the principle of "always fail forward". When I was running Dungeon World I started off giving every monster 1-2 Armour like they have in the book, but later I started removing it and just giving them a couple extra hit points instead. It cut down on bookkeeping and meant that a move never resolved as "nothing happens, I guess". Well, Apocalypse World NPCs don't generally have armor (or even the ability to survive the amount of harm PCs can), and Apocalypse World has the harm move, where even if you suffer a modified 0 harm you still roll +harm and might very well take some sort of consequence even if you don't have lasting damage. Other games don't necessarily think through every change they make to that formula or everything they decide to inherit.
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Nov 22, 2019 07:32
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We make the Harm move even if armor reduces the Harm suffered to 0. The only time I don't is when the Harm is reduced to 0 and the PC chooses "suffer little harm" as an option. That being the case, you very rarely have an exchange where "nothing happens." We recently had a fight between two heavily armored PCs, but the result was one of them taking a point of Harm and the other losing his weapon; that changed the whole nature of the fight right there.
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Nov 22, 2019 07:33
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Intersitial: Our Hearts Intertwined is supposed to be Kingdom Hearts the RPG. The free preview makes me thinks its lacking. Why? All of the rules are in that preview because, according to the table of contents, they spend NO time explaining the rules in any detail. That speaks to...issues in the development process. That said, to those who played it, how good is it? The idea of "you are a bunch of licensed characters hoping into licensed worlds to save them" is a cool concept.
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Nov 23, 2019 05:18
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I didn't think I'd see Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar referenced anywhere outside of a classic radio fan context. Huh.
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Nov 23, 2019 05:31
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malkav11 posted:Well, Apocalypse World NPCs don't generally have armor (or even the ability to survive the amount of harm PCs can), and Apocalypse World has the harm move, where even if you suffer a modified 0 harm you still roll +harm and might very well take some sort of consequence even if you don't have lasting damage. Other games don't necessarily think through every change they make to that formula or everything they decide to inherit. That makes sense. I really need to read Apocalypse World instead of just getting everything second-hand through other games.
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Nov 23, 2019 07:07
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Also Dungeon World randomizes damage rolls. In Apocalyse World, what Harm someone does is dependent on the weapon and fixed. So you know about how bad it'll be if you get hit or how much you can gently caress them up when you hit them.
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Nov 23, 2019 07:41
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People played it at Gauntletcon and said they liked it. They were doing a marvel thing with it. Edit: it’s extremely crazy to me that they’re using sora and Kairi as their examples of play. At least when you file the serial number is that something you’re supposed to… Not let them still be legible. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 08:45
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Covok posted:Intersitial: Our Hearts Intertwined is supposed to be Kingdom Hearts the RPG. The free preview makes me thinks its lacking. Why? All of the rules are in that preview because, according to the table of contents, they spend NO time explaining the rules in any detail. That speaks to...issues in the development process. That said, to those who played it, how good is it? The idea of "you are a bunch of licensed characters hoping into licensed worlds to save them" is a cool concept. I count fifteen core playbooks in that ToC, which seems like a lot. I'm guessing they're each intended to represent a specific KH character?
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Nov 23, 2019 09:03
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Gort posted:Is there a PBTA for me? It feels like a total success on a combat move should mean victory with no loss (EG: Damage the enemy in some way, don't get damaged at all yourself) while mixed success might be the "exchange harm" type stuff I see in Monster of the Week and Apocalypse World. This isn't precisely PbtA, but Blades in the Dark plays combat plays sort of like this. Rolling a 6 or a crit in Blades means you wouldn't take harm but would deal damage, while rolling the 4-5 mixed success puts you at risk of harm.
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Nov 23, 2019 14:00
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And you can choose to expend stress (a limited HP like resource) to minimize or eliminate (group choice, it's one of the levers for tweaking the game) the consequence of a weaker roll. Note that 4-5 is a consequence, it can be Harm, but it can be a large number of other things (worse position, collateral damage, not getting everything you wanted, etc).
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Nov 23, 2019 16:56
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I’ve had players express similar problems with the Legacy Claim By Force move. Best case, there’s a cost.
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Nov 24, 2019 07:12
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Antivehicular posted:I count fifteen core playbooks in that ToC, which seems like a lot. I'm guessing they're each intended to represent a specific KH character? From what I've seen the intent is for you to be able to bring in any fictional character and have an interesting arc and interaction between characters (so like Immortan Joe and The Tooth Fairy in the same party) so the playbooks are to represent different general character archetypes
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Nov 24, 2019 16:51
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Halloween Jack posted:I'll use Vampire as a point of comparison. Vampire talks up "personal horror" and encourages you to build your game around that. But it also gives you social structure and material concerns to band the PCs together and set them against others. Your PCs can be very different people with very different concerns, but they'll usually stick together and have overriding common goals, because that's how coteries work. And if you think about it, there IS a common goal for Kult PCs: finding the Truth. If nothing else works just pretend the PCs are like Animatrix characters on the verge of glitching the Matrix and have them stumbling upon each other (or around from the same neighbourhood) and voila! you have a game. drat, they could be those kids at the glitched house of that episode.
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Nov 25, 2019 01:06
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Are there any good examples of Legacy 2e play I can dig into for inspiration?
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Dec 5, 2019 22:11
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LaSalsaVerde posted:Are there any good examples of Legacy 2e play I can dig into for inspiration? This is a pretty good mini-campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s91efEMH79U&t=1s Or here's a one-shot/review thing: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/s2b03-legacy-life-among-the-ruins/id1449494177?i=1000452488590
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Dec 7, 2019 18:30
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Got to meet Meguey Baker at PAX Unplugged today. She was super cool and we talked for awhile about game design, and PbtA in general. Nothing really interesting to say about that except that it was neat.
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Dec 8, 2019 04:08
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Any recommendations for a sci-fi/space opera system? I've looked at Scum & Villainy and it looks well thought out but a bit involved. I'm looking for something as streamlined as Dungeon World but with space ships and aliens, essentially.
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Dec 14, 2019 00:32
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tanglewood1420 posted:Any recommendations for a sci-fi/space opera system? I've looked at Scum & Villainy and it looks well thought out but a bit involved. I'm looking for something as streamlined as Dungeon World but with space ships and aliens, essentially. Have you heard of Adventures on Dungeon Planet or Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn?
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Dec 14, 2019 01:12
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tanglewood1420 posted:Any recommendations for a sci-fi/space opera system? I've looked at Scum & Villainy and it looks well thought out but a bit involved. I'm looking for something as streamlined as Dungeon World but with space ships and aliens, essentially. We did a sci-fi game that was entirely on a derelict space station using vanilla AW rules and it was loving awesome. I even wrote it up into a little 14 page 'zine PDF. We added two new basic moves for every PC: When you go naked into the void (i.e. encounter hard vaccuum without the benefit of an intact vac-suit or breathing apparatus), you are taking 2-harm (ap) per tick you spend depressurized. Further, anything you attempt is acting under fire. This situation can be helped by: - breathing gear, which reduces the harm to 1-harm (ap) per tick. - a damaged vac-suit, which removes the act under fire condition. When you rummage through your oddments to find something useful to your present situation, roll+sharp. On a 10+ you have just the thing, or near enough that it'll work more or less like you need it to. On a 7-9 you can make it work if you have to, but using it this way will be acting under fire. On a miss, you try to make it work and something goes horribly wrong in the process.
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Dec 14, 2019 01:14
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tanglewood1420 posted:Any recommendations for a sci-fi/space opera system? I've looked at Scum & Villainy and it looks well thought out but a bit involved. I'm looking for something as streamlined as Dungeon World but with space ships and aliens, essentially. Uncharted Worlds is a different take on space opera, though not necessarily simpler (though with DW as a yardstick I think it's maybe only a little more complex). It's really a PbtA space sandbox game. Haven't played it but have read through and it feels like it'd play much more like an ongoing space opera TV series (star trek, red dwarf, etc.) than a more narratively cohesive piece of media. The complexity stems from the fact it has a lot of optional rules (weirdly extensive cargo rules, vehicle combat rules, three mini-playbooks being combined to make each character, etc.) but moment to moment it's a relatively solid seeming PbtA game with some standout moves. It kinda spreads itself a bit thin though. With this breadth comes a real lack of flavour, which is a shame. There's tools there to do some really cool sci-fi action but it doesn't inspire me as much as I'd like. I've heard good things about Impulse Drive and it seems structured in a much more conventionally PbtA way, with playbooks and moves that jump out a bit more to me than those in UW on first blush. Worth checking both imo Macdoo fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 00:28
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Macdoo posted:Uncharted Worlds is a different take on space opera, though not necessarily simpler (though with DW as a yardstick I think it's maybe only a little more complex). It's really a PbtA space sandbox game. Haven't played it but have read through and it feels like it'd play much more like an ongoing space opera TV series (star trek, red dwarf, etc.) than a more narratively cohesive piece of media. The complexity stems from the fact it has a lot of optional rules (weirdly extensive cargo rules, vehicle combat rules, three mini-playbooks being combined to make each character, etc.) but moment to moment it's a relatively solid seeming PbtA game with some standout moves. It kinda spreads itself a bit thin though. With this breadth comes a real lack of flavour, which is a shame. There's tools there to do some really cool sci-fi action but it doesn't inspire me as much as I'd like. I've played a few Uncharted Worlds one-offs and it played pretty smoothly - it is absolutely Traveller PBTA but it worked great for that style of play.
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Dec 18, 2019 01:23
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Uncharted Worlds looks a bit bland and uninspiring to me, Impulse Drive seems to have a bit more zest and caught my interest more. At least purely going off the previews of each. Adventures on Dungeon planet is a bit more Flash Gordon and pulpy when in my head I was thinking Star Wars/Cowboy Bebop. Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn looks potentially really cool with the right group, but I'm running a one shot for my family on Boxing Day of whom only one other has played any kind of RPG before, so that may a bit too much to throw them into. Thanks for all the suggestions!
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Dec 18, 2019 01:56
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Rhapsody of Blood Question: Anyone have an idea of how the Drive and Motivation work? They're both described as separate aspects of the bloodline/explorer but seem pretty much identical in practice. They're both chosen each generation for the new explorer and give them a reason to delve into the castle, it looks like?quote:Finally, your drive gives your explorer a
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Dec 20, 2019 05:22
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Nuns with Guns posted:Rhapsody of Blood Question: Anyone have an idea of how the Drive and Motivation work? They're both described as separate aspects of the bloodline/explorer but seem pretty much identical in practice. They're both chosen each generation for the new explorer and give them a reason to delve into the castle, it looks like? Oh, hmm, you're right that motivations seem pretty extraneous. They don't do anything, and you'd be fine if you just ignored that step - if you want to do both, your motivation is why you became a monster hunting adventurer and your drive is why you're diving into the castle right now. Neither have a mechanical impact, they're all fiction framing.
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Dec 20, 2019 13:05
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tanglewood1420 posted:Any recommendations for a sci-fi/space opera system? I've looked at Scum & Villainy and it looks well thought out but a bit involved. I'm looking for something as streamlined as Dungeon World but with space ships and aliens, essentially. Impulse Drive goes for a space opera flavour. You can get the full rules for free or get the pretty art PDFon my Drivethru & Itch, or or hard copies through Drivethru. The pretty art PDF is even 1/2 price right now on Itch, so you can grab it for $7.50 https://adrian-thoen.itch.io/ https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/5316/Adrian-Thoen
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Dec 25, 2019 01:36
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Anyone have any experience/thoughts on Farflung?
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Dec 25, 2019 05:53
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It's not very good. A mishmash of pbta and the publisher's house system. I like what it's trying to do (weird sexy scifi) but not the implementation
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Dec 25, 2019 15:01
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Hello folks/Flavivirus specifically! A friend linked me to Voidheart Symphony, and I really like the look of it on paper; it really scratches the itch I've been looking at for small-town magical realism-y/stylish gameplay, and I really like a lot of the stuff with Covenants as a way of creating deep, mechanically supported social play. A few questions, though: - Has anyone played a game of it so far? How's it play, and does anyone have any advice for running it? What’s in the pdf looks pretty complete, but a lot of the GM section still looks like a WIP, especially the GM principles, and so any suggestions for things that might not be immediately be obvious to a reader would be excellent. - I am entirely new to kickstarting things, but missed the actual kickstarter campaign. I can’t get in on the backerkit for the campaign, can I, to get access to the most up-to-date versions of it (and also to actually pay for it)? Or is what’s on the itchio page the same as what backers have? I'm meant to be finishing my DPhil at some point over the next few months so it's entirely possible I won't be starting until the estimated delivery date anyway. WINNERSH TRIANGLE fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 01:50
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madadric posted:Impulse Drive goes for a space opera flavour. You can get the full rules for free or get the pretty art PDFon my Drivethru & Itch, or or hard copies through Drivethru. Impulse Drive is a cool game. I have a physical copy of it. It's kind of for that "Starship crew of misfits" design. You know, like Firefly. It's a cool game and, since its on sale, you should check it out.
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Dec 27, 2019 02:22
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WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:Hello folks/Flavivirus specifically! A friend linked me to Voidheart Symphony, and I really like the look of it on paper; it really scratches the itch I've been looking at for small-town magical realism-y/stylish gameplay, and I really like a lot of the stuff with Covenants as a way of creating deep, mechanically supported social play. A few questions, though: I'm running Voidheart for the teens at work. We've been playing weekly, give or take, for most of the school year, about 3hrs/week. Idk how well suited it is to a small town setting or magical realism; my players and I are entirely on our own bullshit 100% of the time and set it in 1999 NYC. I'm using the itch.io version because i missed the window to Kickstart it (I'd happily be a slacker backer now that I have disposable income tho). The kids absolutely love it and I'm at 6 players now. My main advice is to have a strong thematic gimmick for each dungeon/vassal and to use webs of connected NPCs to keep the players connected.
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Dec 27, 2019 04:34
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DoctorWhat posted:I'm running Voidheart for the teens at work. We've been playing weekly, give or take, for most of the school year, about 3hrs/week. Idk how well suited it is to a small town setting or magical realism; my players and I are entirely on our own bullshit 100% of the time and set it in 1999 NYC. I'm using the itch.io version because i missed the window to Kickstart it (I'd happily be a slacker backer now that I have disposable income tho). Oh wow this is extremely heartening to hear! I’ll be putting up the BackerKit preorder next week, along with the next release of the game (and the first backer-only release - currently the Itch version is the most up-to-date one). GM principles and scenario prep are definitely something to be worked on, though I recently commissioned 10 example Vassals from a bunch of writers to go in the book which should at least serve as a good source of example Qualities.
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Dec 28, 2019 17:32
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Sci-Fi PbtA: Impulse Drive looks pretty great, although I don't think it's absolutely clear how some of the Moves for downtime, trade, ship payments etc all fit in to the overall flow of play. There is also Offworlders which is a really stripped back PbtA game which you can grab for free on DriveThruRPG.
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Dec 29, 2019 21:08
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Someone on Forbes wrote up a beginner's guide of sorts to Powered by the Apocalypse: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwieland/2020/12/29/a-beginners-guide-to-powered-by-the-apocalypse-games/#259637a3293c
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Dec 30, 2019 22:50
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A PbtA game called Last Fleet has just launched on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/last-fleet-rpg-lastfleetrpg. The last of humanity are fleeing across space, pursued by the implacable inhuman adversary that destroyed their civilisation. They're outnumbered and outgunned. Supplies are running low. The actions of a brave few could be all that stands between humanity and extinction. It's very Battlestar Galactica, focusing on the stress and personal relationships of the crew and their issues. Interesting stuff!
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Jan 3, 2020 08:11
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Three of the wrestlers in our game of WWW now have art: My character, Rosa AKA Mourn (started out as Indie Darling but now has transitioned into Anti-Hero):  Shay AKA Shay 2000, the Golden Boy:  Javier AKA Fragata, the Luchador:  Art by twitter.com/iisjah
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Jan 3, 2020 13:35
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Those wrestlers are absolutely amazing. Gosh I need to play WWW its so cool
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Jan 6, 2020 10:16
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Does anyone have any experience running PBTAs (and specifically WWW) at a convention? I'm in two minds to run my own session at the UKGE and wondering if anyone has any experience running them. Do you usually have premade characters? Do you run the questions on the day if they are premade? How do you handle rules teaching?
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Jan 7, 2020 13:41
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Tekopo posted:Does anyone have any experience running PBTAs (and specifically WWW) at a convention? I'm in two minds to run my own session at the UKGE and wondering if anyone has any experience running them. Do you usually have premade characters? Do you run the questions on the day if they are premade? How do you handle rules teaching? Yeah I've ran a few and played a few! Not WWW unfortunately but it gets full marks for my first point which is some games are better than others for a con slot. WWW is very good for it so I'll move quickly on. I tend to preselect skills (if necessary) for one more playbook than I'll have players in a way that emphasises the selling points of the playbooks. You want the playbooks to be as different as possible. X+1 so the last person doesn't feel stuck. Relationships, look, name, gimmicks etc. I leave for the players as these are core gameplay in PbtA. If it's a longer slot (4+ hrs) I sometimes let them take one upgrade at any point during the session to further differentiate their character. This should hopefully get you into the meat of character creation - introductions and relationships - in under 15 minutes and playing in under 30. If it's a game where they have relationships with everybody at the table (e.g. MotW), limit that to the people on their left and right. WWW is a little more complicated on the rules front due to the heat, momentum and card systems. For standard PbtA I tell them something along the lines of: "When I put you in a situation, or if you have an idea, tell us what your character does on screen. If it could fail it'll normally trigger a move, which tells you what happens next. To do the move, your character has to do the thing and vice versa." I'd recommend for WWW specifically, outlining the heat and momentum systems at this point, emphasizing how they tie into the fiction. You don't need to go massively in depth, just enough so that people know why they should engage with these systems and what the consequences are for doing so. Then you can jump straight into play. Establish obvious goals (win the final and get the belt) and throw them straight into the first fight (I'd recommend a battle royale so they all get to do their entrances and get the spotlight for a bit). As a GM all you really need to keep in mind from hereafter is to push the spotlight towards wallflowers, ask "How does that look on screen?" if they try to trigger a move without describing an action and to try to move towards a finale when you have about 30-40 minutes left on the clock. Presumably this would be your final match. This should hopefully leave you 10-15 minutes at the end of your slot to decompress and tidy up the table. Best of luck! Macdoo fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 16:51
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Tekopo posted:Does anyone have any experience running PBTAs (and specifically WWW) at a convention? I'm in two minds to run my own session at the UKGE and wondering if anyone has any experience running them. Do you usually have premade characters? Do you run the questions on the day if they are premade? How do you handle rules teaching? PbtA games in general are very well suited to convention play (and especially for people who have no RPG experience) because the rules mechanics are so light-weight.
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Jan 7, 2020 17:12
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