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If those fuckers are always gonna make me the DM it's my time to shine!
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Jan 15, 2020 04:25
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One genuinely ingenious campaign concept I remember reading on RPGnet years ago: You're the sidekicks of The Shadow, each of you is the world's best at one thing while The Shadow is the world's best at everything. Welp, he's fuckin' dead, so you take turns playing The Shadow. Very easy to replace with Doc Savage or The Avenger, who had the same concept. Or John.
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Jan 15, 2020 04:37
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Halloween Jack posted:One genuinely ingenious campaign concept I remember reading on RPGnet years ago: You're the sidekicks of The Shadow, each of you is the world's best at one thing while The Shadow is the world's best at everything. Welp, he's fuckin' dead, so you take turns playing The Shadow. Or Batman with everyone being one of his various sidekicks
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Jan 15, 2020 04:43
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Mystic Mongol posted:I think I've outed myself as a fake Earthdawn fan because I never got to actually play, so I missed that this is the wrong table. I've been gaming forever, and for a while Earthdawn was the hottest poo poo in fantasy gaming. I played and ran a whole bunch of it. It was fun and flavorful compared to the excessively bland AD&D 2e. It actually worked fairly well, all things considered. We houseruled out the d20's early on, but it was really not awful. The biggest gripe I had with it was how Karma worked out. You needed to spend your xp for it, and the races with the better karma die also got to buy it cheaper and keep more of it. It got kinda broken.
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Jan 15, 2020 04:45
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I think it could be fun to have a game where you're the B-team who deals with all of Captain Amazing's bullshit, but you need a strong idea of just what that means and everyone needs to be totally onboard. play ars magica
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Jan 15, 2020 05:12
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Earthdawn is a classic fantasy heartbreaker. It was clearly some dude's D&D setting & house rules that were iterated on for a decade before he decided to publish it. So it has a lot of great incremental changes to D&D and interesting worldbuilding ideas (e.g. levels exist in the world), and then there's the step dice system.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:44
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Gobbeldygook posted:Earthdawn is a classic fantasy heartbreaker. It was clearly some dude's D&D setting & house rules that were iterated on for a decade before he decided to publish it. So it has a lot of great incremental changes to D&D and interesting worldbuilding ideas (e.g. levels exist in the world), and then there's the step dice system. ED is weird in that it is still being published, with new editions and re-released core books and new material, which is just baffling to me. Is there really that much of a ongoing fan base for ED? Are there really groups out there champing at the bit for ED 4th edition and a chance to rebuy all their old splat and setting books? I don't get it. Fading Suns is another 90s RPG that keeps getting small-press new editions, and I'm similarly baffled by it, that someone looked at the current RPG market and decided that yes, there absolutely was a viable place for another version of this oddball 90s RPG.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:57
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FMguru posted:Nah, ED's not a heartbreaker. It was published by a major company, it got a full line of support with writing by some major industry veterans, the setting isn't just "more elves and dwarves", and there's a lot more to the system than just AD&D plus a hundred pages of unnecessarily detailed house rules. I'd put it in the same category as Rolemaster and RuneQuest, fantasy systems that try to do a "better" D&D (as opposed to heartbreakers, which tend to be "D&D but more"). I'm not certain that qualifies it as not starting out as a heartbreaker, but then I feel the same way about RIFTS.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:17
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FMguru posted:ED is weird in that it is still being published, with new editions and re-released core books and new material, which is just baffling to me. Is there really that much of a ongoing fan base for ED? Are there really groups out there champing at the bit for ED 4th edition and a chance to rebuy all their old splat and setting books? I don't get it. Fading Suns is another 90s RPG that keeps getting small-press new editions, and I'm similarly baffled by it, that someone looked at the current RPG market and decided that yes, there absolutely was a viable place for another version of this oddball 90s RPG.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:25
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Lemon-Lime posted:It really isn't if you look at stuff that isn't the video games. Geralt spends most of the novels travelling in a party with a ranger, a bard, and a vampire who is also a medical doctor. And only one of those can be represented in the rpg. They did put Clerics in though
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Jan 15, 2020 07:34
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theironjef posted:I've actually never played the games. I was basing it on Henry Cavill's performance, which basically boiled down to 10 episodes of "I'm Boney I'm Boney, leave me aloooooooooney." Even the prequel stories (which is what the Netflix show adapts) gloss over 90% of the time Geralt spends travelling alone to instead show a bunch of distinct adventures that begin when Geralt happens to run into Yennefer or Dandelion or someone else he's adventured with before. Bssically, it's entirely in the framing. The only real difference between The Witcher and traditional party-based RPGs is that most of the time, the PCs all go off to do stuff on their own for a few months between adventures instead of the game assuming the party spends all their time together. This is pretty trivially modelled by having mechanics for downtime actions that take 6-12 months to accomplish instead of a day or five.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:47
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Mystic Mongol posted:I think I've outed myself as a fake Earthdawn fan because I never got to actually play, so I missed that this is the wrong table. I'm guessing it would be from third or fourth edition. I've played a lot of first and second edition Earthdawn but there's no way you'd get me defend the rule system in TYOOL 2020.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:49
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Lemon-Lime posted:Bssically, it's entirely in the framing. The only real difference between The Witcher and traditional party-based RPGs is that most of the time, the PCs all go off to do stuff on their own for a few months between adventures instead of the game assuming the party spends all their time together. I feel like this is how AD&D was expecting, given what level ups were and how gold translated to exp. neonchameleon posted:Almost no 4e haters are going to object to, for example, a Witcher character's At Wills being Strong Style and Fast Style, and their first and seventh level encounter powers being the ability to take a potion while their third is the ability to cast signs. It's a little more hardcoded than 4e needs to be but gets you to the right sort of combat with only a little obfuscation. I mean, I didn't think 4e haters would object to "I stab something and then grab it" but here we are. You could not mention it was 4e-based, but then you just have a lot of extra work on your hands because you now have to design a mathematically sound system.
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Jan 15, 2020 08:10
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FMguru posted:Nah, ED's not a heartbreaker. It was published by a major company, it got a full line of support with writing by some major industry veterans, the setting isn't just "more elves and dwarves", and there's a lot more to the system than just AD&D plus a hundred pages of unnecessarily detailed house rules. I'd put it in the same category as Rolemaster and RuneQuest, fantasy systems that try to do a "better" D&D (as opposed to heartbreakers, which tend to be "D&D but more"). To be fair Rolemaster and RuneQuest are also still being supported, though RuneQuest at least is a legitimately good system beyond just being an attempt at doing D&D better As for why these old games still get new stuff, well among the various reasons include people wanting new copies, as well as new people who found out about the game and want to try the game out, and in addition for various reasons this occasionally leads to new editions of said games being made
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Jan 15, 2020 08:19
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Subjunctive posted:Don’t all editions of D&D have that too, for both standing and running starts? Halloween Jack posted:One genuinely ingenious campaign concept I remember reading on RPGnet years ago: You're the sidekicks of The Shadow, each of you is the world's best at one thing while The Shadow is the world's best at everything. Welp, he's fuckin' dead, so you take turns playing The Shadow. 1) Trapped in the Nothingzone 2) Battling his evil duplicate in the sun 3) Accidentally ate a no-stone 4) On a date with his evil duplicate in the sun 5) Angsting on the moon 6) Fantastic Journey battling the sun in his evil duplicate
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Jan 15, 2020 08:25
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Halloween Jack posted:Hah! Nice try. That's an Oglaf strip.
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Jan 15, 2020 08:27
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neonchameleon posted:Almost no 4e haters are going to object to, for example, a Witcher character's At Wills being Strong Style and Fast Style, and their first and seventh level encounter powers being the ability to take a potion while their third is the ability to cast signs. It's a little more hardcoded than 4e needs to be but gets you to the right sort of combat with only a little obfuscation. lol a witcher is pretty much just a ranger with maybe a fancy theme
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Jan 15, 2020 08:59
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LatwPIAT posted:My understanding is that Mike Pondsmith made it to fulfill some contractual obligation. I've seen people claim that he kind of half-assed it and just slapped some Witcher paint over CP2020, but I offer an alternative theory, which is that Mike Pondsmith simply thinks that his design skills peaked with the Interlock/Fuzion system in the early 90s and is basically still making the games he loved making in the mid-90s, with all that entails.
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Jan 15, 2020 12:13
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Tibalt posted:I have an idea tinkering in the back of my head of a game where all the players are "supporting cast" to a DMPC "Main Character". The original inspiration was BioWare games, but the problem I ran into was "why would you want to do that" and "why would you need specific rules for it when nothing stops a DM from playing Commander Shepherd right now". This works 100% as an L5R game where the DM PC is a major magistrate or (if the whole party's willing to go in on it) a significant clan figure, and jobs are centered around supporting them and making sure that things get solved without coming to their attention if at all possible and/or doing major support/enabler tasks for the NPC's goals. This goes double if the NPC is completely incompetent and has to be worked around for everybody's good.
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Jan 15, 2020 14:00
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White House Staff: the RPG
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Jan 15, 2020 14:09
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Starting to sound more like My Life With Master
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Jan 15, 2020 14:36
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My Lovely Horse posted:White House Staff: the RPG Splicer fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 15:19
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Starting to sound more like My Life With Master
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Jan 15, 2020 15:20
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drrockso20 posted:To be fair Rolemaster and RuneQuest are also still being supported, though RuneQuest at least is a legitimately good system beyond just being an attempt at doing D&D better
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Jan 15, 2020 15:32
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FMguru posted:ED is weird in that it is still being published, with new editions and re-released core books and new material, which is just baffling to me. Is there really that much of a ongoing fan base for ED? Are there really groups out there champing at the bit for ED 4th edition and a chance to rebuy all their old splat and setting books? I don't get it. Fading Suns is another 90s RPG that keeps getting small-press new editions, and I'm similarly baffled by it, that someone looked at the current RPG market and decided that yes, there absolutely was a viable place for another version of this oddball 90s RPG. Later editions did the later edition thing and just rolled all the weird fiddly bits into the core. It was ... not great. The small quality-of-life improvements were overwhelmed by extra fiddliness and unnecessary mechanical weight, and it's a game I could never consider bringing to my table in 2020. I also checked out Savage Worlds: Earthdawn and it was extremely bad.
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Jan 15, 2020 15:45
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Tibalt posted:I have an idea tinkering in the back of my head of a game where all the players are "supporting cast" to a DMPC "Main Character". The original inspiration was BioWare games, but the problem I ran into was "why would you want to do that" and "why would you need specific rules for it when nothing stops a DM from playing Commander Shepherd right now". Companion's Tale is about telling the story of an epic/destined hero from the point of view of their family, allies, rivals, etc. It's GMless so you rotate control of the narrative building up the tale.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:10
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90s Cringe Rock posted:His superpowers include "hot," "can't get you pregnant," and "no stds," he is an oglaf. Monsterhearts of the week
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Jan 15, 2020 17:38
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Halloween Jack posted:One genuinely ingenious campaign concept I remember reading on RPGnet years ago: You're the sidekicks of The Shadow, each of you is the world's best at one thing while The Shadow is the world's best at everything. Welp, he's fuckin' dead, so you take turns playing The Shadow. Or Madame Mirage? She’s an awesome magic and illusion themed superheroine. She also doesn’t exist. A whole bunch of actresses, projection technicians, infiltrators and hackers do, though.
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Jan 15, 2020 17:50
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hyphz posted:Or Madame Mirage? She’s an awesome magic and illusion themed superheroine. She also doesn’t exist. A whole bunch of actresses, projection technicians, infiltrators and hackers do, though. This is pretty much the plot of Spider-Man: Far From Home
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Jan 15, 2020 18:56
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My brain somehow combined a couple posts and now I’m imagining a game called My Life with Epstein. My brain is a horrible frightening place to be right now and I do not like it.
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Jan 15, 2020 19:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:My brain somehow combined a couple posts and now I’m imagining a game called My Life with Epstein.
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Jan 15, 2020 19:34
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LongDarkNight posted:Companion's Tale is about telling the story of an epic/destined hero from the point of view of their family, allies, rivals, etc. It's GMless so you rotate control of the narrative building up the tale.
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Jan 15, 2020 20:05
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My latest game, Shepherds Through the Ash and Flame, is now live! In the game, you take on the role of a wombat trying to save animals from the horrifying bushfires currently devastating Australia. It is a one player game that can be played within a half hour, and includes means of how to help and support those currently suffering from and fighting these fires. In lieu of payment, please consider donating to the following sources: WIRES Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities NSW Rural Fire Service
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Jan 15, 2020 22:45
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https://twitter.com/ProZD/status/1217559905025978368?s=20
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Jan 16, 2020 02:54
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Lyrics-wise I would've thought "It was acceptable in the 80s" was more fitting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOV5WXISM24
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Jan 16, 2020 03:32
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 I just published another game, Like Skyscrapers Blotting Out The Sun! It's a 2-pager about a Writer working on their magnum opus and their friend, a Translator, who's appending footnotes that explain all of the deeper meanings and hidden details (historic references, linguistic details, veiled insults to public figures and the like) - but they keep colliding in the middle, and clipping the story short. In keeping with that, half the game is (helpful) appendices and footnotes for the other half. The game's inspired by the falling-out between the author Vladimir Nabokov (who wrote Lolita, among other things) and the literary critic Edmund "Bunny" Wilson after decades of friendship, following Wilson's brutal public critique of Nabokov's excrutiatingly literal translation of the Russian masterpiece Eugene Onegin. The title comes from a quote by Nabokov along the lines of "I want footnotes like skyscrapers reaching up to the top of the page" (be careful what you wish for). Basically he was the original "the subs should be a direct translation, fill the screen with TL notes" kind of guy. This one's just on my Patreon ($5 tier) for a month, then it's going on sale on itch.io (though it has an itch page already, linked above).
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Jan 16, 2020 10:57
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That is such a lovely header/ cover image, I'm so taken with it.
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Jan 16, 2020 13:04
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...anybody else feel like their hardline stances on gaming are softening as they get older? Because I can feel mine softening. Like, I'm 32. I have a full-time job, a romantic partner, any number of responsibilities and obligations, and other hobbies and interests. All of the people I regularly associate with are in the same boat. "No gaming is better than bad gaming" doesn't really cut it for me anymore; my time is so precious and my opportunities to play the kind of characters I want to play in the kind of campaign I want to play in are so limited that I take what I can get if it means I get to roll dice with friends. Anyway I got invited to a Pathfinder campaign and I'm honestly kind of excited to dust off my Ratfolk Cavalier even though Pathfinder is fiddly garbage, and I'm 100% sure that this is not a stance I would have taken in my 20s.
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Jan 16, 2020 14:21
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No gaming is better than bad gaming, but bad games are fine if you can squeeze a good experience out of them.
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Jan 16, 2020 14:36
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I feel it's the other way around. I'm not gonna waste my limited free time on a bad game system or a lovely group.
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Jan 16, 2020 15:20
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