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Leperflesh posted:There have been some problems, but nothing on the scale of e.g. the d&d rapist endorsement, and nothing that goes specifically to the game designer. Delays in delivering on kickstarter content is one (but everything is actually being delivered, just... late... in the case of some of the final conan supplements, years late) and they quietly employed (but credited under the pseudonym "Michael Brophy") that perennial joke Gareth "far west" Skarka to work on the star trek project because someone was friends with him. Apparently he did what he was asked for and was not a major contributor, but it was shady to try and sneak him a bone given a significant fraction of the customers would have boycotted the product if they'd known, on the reasonable basis that Skarka is a thief who shouldn't be given more chances and people who give him more chances are part of the problem of enabling thieves to operate in the TG industry.
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Jan 24, 2020 07:16
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:if you can't stand that format (and I don't blame you) the tl;dr is that Lovecraft has such a naive, constricted, and paranoid concept of the unknown that half the time, just honestly assessing yourself leads to the conclusion that you're part of the huge terrifying outside universe looking in on him, and that's not scary, it's just pitiful Having a fun time imagining what Lovecraft would make of goons tbh
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Jan 24, 2020 10:24
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My Lovely Horse posted:That's all good to know to begin with, thanks. I don't want to come across like I'm dismissing the political issues surrounding our hobby, and I hope you'll not take this the wrong way, but I was really kind of gunning for "are their existing games any good, do they support the vibes of the specific fiction they're emulating" etc. rather than "what's their standing in our corner of social media". Conan and the 2d20 system sound interesting from your earlier post, I'll be keeping an eye on this (well it's Dishonored, I was gonna anyway). Having read but not played it, Star Trek Adventures looks amazing for genre emulation. Definitely the first Star Trek branded RPG that is actually trying to create an episode rather than "simulate the reality" silliness. There's too many mechanics to talk about that tie into it, but the game basically mechanically encourages you to have normal away missions, examine things and ask questions constantly, builds on teamwork and multi-part solutions to the problem of the weak, act nonviolently and fight in self-defense, and has its own "simulate the scientific method" complex check subsystem. Also has great support for switching to guest characters or temporary crew when your main character is busy in a scene. And the Operations splatbook has the most vital star trek table: 
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Jan 24, 2020 10:36
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Ettin posted:Having a fun time imagining what Lovecraft would make of goons tbh quote:But Carter preferred to look at them than at his captors, which were indeed shocking and uncouth black things with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and fly and shitpost; that was the way of the Night Crew.
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Jan 24, 2020 10:42
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Pieces of Peace posted:And the Operations splatbook has the most vital star trek table:
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Jan 24, 2020 10:47
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Tuxedo that is 
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Jan 24, 2020 10:48
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My Lovely Horse posted:That's all good to know to begin with, thanks. I don't want to come across like I'm dismissing the political issues surrounding our hobby, and I hope you'll not take this the wrong way, but I was really kind of gunning for "are their existing games any good, do they support the vibes of the specific fiction they're emulating" etc. rather than "what's their standing in our corner of social media". Conan and the 2d20 system sound interesting from your earlier post, I'll be keeping an eye on this (well it's Dishonored, I was gonna anyway).
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Jan 24, 2020 10:54
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UnCO3 posted:
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Jan 24, 2020 11:08
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90s Cringe Rock posted:The capitalisation of four out of a hundred entries for no apparent reason hurts. I had the exact same reaction.
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Jan 24, 2020 11:37
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Halloween Jack posted:It's funny that he wrote some well-regarded regional fiction, but he'll only be remembered as the bad, scummy mythos author. CoC's categorisation of major entities into "Great Old Ones" vs. "Outer Gods" I will actually defend on the grounds that Lovecraft used the term "Old One" to mean something slightly different in more or less every story he used the term, and there's definitely a divide between stories where the major entities are weird but basically materialistic aliens and stories where they're more abstract cosmic phenomena, which that division does quite a good job of underscoring.
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Jan 24, 2020 11:43
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Zaphod42 posted:I Imagine Hastur's play would end up like the play in Synechdoche where it consumes the lives of everybody involved for years and constructs plays within plays that are forever rehearsed but never actually performed
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Jan 24, 2020 11:45
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Hastur is incredibly frustrated that humans don't have the will/organs/magic to complete his play, that's why he keeps trying. He's just a catty Broadway director. "No, no, no, what is this? You're not supposed to have your head explode until Lady Yquotha comes on! Ugh, someone get me a new lead."
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Jan 24, 2020 11:55
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The real tragedy of Weird Fiction is that Arthur Machen and C. L. Moore aren't household names.
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Jan 24, 2020 11:59
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Okay, that all sounds pretty promising for the Dishonored game! Kinda wondering now how they're gonna swing it into a group-based one, but I'm sure that's the least problem.
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Jan 24, 2020 13:05
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Hostile V posted:I just want to second "if you want to do indie cosmic horror poo poo" please for the love of God just get Silent Legions and play with some random roll tables. It's great and you can interpret your rolls to see how they make sense and build a whole thing out of that. (One thing I do think some of his games need is to collapse STR and CON together. STR as D&D defines it just isn't very useful in a lot of genres that aren't Megadungeon-style D&D. Hell, combining STR and CON is practically a little flag letting you know the designer is competent, nowadays.)
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Jan 24, 2020 15:18
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Halloween Jack posted:(One thing I do think some of his games need is to collapse STR and CON together. STR as D&D defines it just isn't very useful in a lot of genres that aren't Megadungeon-style D&D. Hell, combining STR and CON is practically a little flag letting you know the designer is competent, nowadays.)
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Jan 24, 2020 15:20
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combining STR and CON into one stat is miserable centrism that shows you're smart enough to know that ability scores are broken but too cowardly to destroy them
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Jan 24, 2020 15:24
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Left-Wing Narrativism: An Infantile Disorder
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Jan 24, 2020 15:27
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Halloween Jack posted:Left-Wing Narrativism: An Infantile Disorder new thread title
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Jan 24, 2020 15:27
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90s Cringe Rock posted:"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that’s just peanuts to space."
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Jan 24, 2020 15:29
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:combining STR and CON into one stat is miserable centrism that shows you're smart enough to know that ability scores are broken but too cowardly to destroy them
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Jan 24, 2020 15:32
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Splicer posted:DTAS is a truism for D&D due to all its replacements, but ability scores have their place in other systems. The trick is working out what ability scores are right for your system. To be slightly more serious for a second, ability scores represent two things: - One is basically just traits / proficiencies; it's a narrative description of who your character is / what they can do that's invoked into the mechanical layer of the game to make you more or less likely to succeed at something. This is totally fine, but it's not really what I'm talking about when I say DTAS. - The other is almost purely mechanical: it's a way to force the player into a set of exclusive, branching build choices that overlap with but are not identical to class. Feat prerequisites, secondary ability scores, that sort of thing. This is where I'm a hardliner; there is absolutely no reason to use derived math to accomplish this. All it does is obscure the decision you're making with unnecessary complexity. (The math is necessary for the previous point, but the only reason it's used for this part is because designers overloaded the concept.) e: Unless abilities scores are extremely fluid, it also means you have to plan these decisions in advance. This doesn't bother me much, I love planning builds out, but there's no reason to cater to me here because the choice doesn't have to be exclusive at all! Give me a system where there's no punishment for making those decisions on the fly, and I can just... do them in advance anyways. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Jan 24, 2020 |
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Jan 24, 2020 15:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:To be slightly more serious for a second, ability scores represent two things:
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Jan 24, 2020 16:29
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Splicer posted:DTAS is a truism for D&D due to all the other aspects of the system, but ability scores have their place in other games. The trick is working out what ability scores are right for your system. Ability scores work well in games where the ability score is your broad basis of competence in a large array of tasks. Like the Cardinal system going 'you have a d12 in Mind, you get one of the biggest dice and even if you have no other training or edges, there's a chance you could roll a 12 and win at basically anything Mind related because this is your wheelhouse' is fine, because it's a dicepool system where you take the highest and so having any d12s is a big deal. So that remains significant no matter how many other abilities you stack on.
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Jan 24, 2020 18:06
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Pieces of Peace posted:Having read but not played it, Star Trek Adventures looks amazing for genre emulation. Definitely the first Star Trek branded RPG that is actually trying to create an episode rather than "simulate the reality" silliness. There's too many mechanics to talk about that tie into it, but the game basically mechanically encourages you to have normal away missions, examine things and ask questions constantly, builds on teamwork and multi-part solutions to the problem of the weak, act nonviolently and fight in self-defense, and has its own "simulate the scientific method" complex check subsystem. Also has great support for switching to guest characters or temporary crew when your main character is busy in a scene. That sounds super rad. I can see a lot of roleplaying discussions around the prime directive, lol.
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Jan 24, 2020 18:33
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I dislike the D&D idea of ability scores where you generate them, then derive a set of values from each, then derive the numbers you actually use playing the game from those. My ability scores in D&D should be Fortitude, Reflex and Will and flow directly into any attacks, defenses and skills there are. Probably rename them to be a bit more broadly applicable, but as far as mechanics are concerned.
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Jan 24, 2020 19:14
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Zaphod42 posted:That sounds super rad. my last STA game had like half of the time spent with us debating if the prime directive allows us to do the mission at all. It was very trek and good.
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Jan 24, 2020 19:28
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My Lovely Horse posted:I dislike the D&D idea of ability scores where you generate them, then derive a set of values from each, then derive the numbers you actually use playing the game from those. My ability scores in D&D should be Fortitude, Reflex and Will and flow directly into any attacks, defenses and skills there are. Probably rename them to be a bit more broadly applicable, but as far as mechanics are concerned.
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Jan 24, 2020 19:34
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I think DTAS is a particular problem for games in the D&D genre, where combat is frequent and there's a ton of derived stats that all plug into combat. Like, using 3e and 4e as an example: you end up having to patch on whole subclasses with unique abilities, just to let someone play a simple concept like a smart fighter. Or you end up with weird-seeming situations like Divine classes that have the Religion skill but aren't any good at it. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jan 24, 2020 |
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Jan 24, 2020 19:36
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Halloween Jack posted:Or you end up with weird-seeming situations like Divine classes that have the Religion skill but aren't any good at it. this isn't as weird as you might think 
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Jan 24, 2020 19:39
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Splicer posted:D&D should have no ability scores. You've got races, classes, archetypes, skills, backgrounds, and feats to say how strong, agile, tough, smart, wise, or charismatic your guy is. All the scores do is get in the way. So all elven rangers are created equal? Not sure I like that. On the other hand, D&D stats need redesigning and rebalancing for sure. Fewer would be good too. But I think no stats at all is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would go the other way, do away with races and backgrounds but still have some simple stats. Your race should just be part of your backstory and roleplaying, like we discussed a long time back in this thread, racial stats has issues a plenty.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:08
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While it's more complicated than this, the newest edition of Savage Worlds mostly uses Attributes for resistances, while Skills are used for actions. And while skills and attributes aren't totally separate, their link is a lot more tenuous than it is in most RPGs. A guy without great Agility can be a fantastic shot ... it just takes a few more character resources to get there. On the other side of the coin, it has Strength as its own stat. SW is multi-genre, and this makes a lot more sense for a fantasy setting than a modern one. (It tries to make it less bad by giving strength minimums for better weapons, but still.) Also, there's the backwards compatibility issue, so it's got some 20-year-old baggage as a result.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:09
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Zaphod42 posted:So all elven rangers are created equal? Not sure I like that.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:13
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DTAS allows you to play your melf any which way you want and still be effective in game. What's more, it's folly to think that ability scores are the only way to differentiate between characters.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:16
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Zaphod42 posted:So all elven rangers are created equal? Not sure I like that.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:18
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Splicer posted:All eleven rangers with the Outlander background who took the acrobatics, stealth, and animal handling skills, the dueling fighting style, the Humanoids favoured enemy, and the Horizon Walker archetype would be created equal. Okay that's fair
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Jan 24, 2020 20:21
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My Lovely Horse posted:That's all good to know to begin with, thanks. I don't want to come across like I'm dismissing the political issues surrounding our hobby, and I hope you'll not take this the wrong way, but I was really kind of gunning for "are their existing games any good, do they support the vibes of the specific fiction they're emulating" etc. rather than "what's their standing in our corner of social media". Conan and the 2d20 system sound interesting from your earlier post, I'll be keeping an eye on this (well it's Dishonored, I was gonna anyway). 2d20 is quite solid. It's a favorite of mine in the crunchier spectrum, though it isn't as refined there (Infinity, etc.). Conan is good. STA is amazingly well-structured in the areas of genre-emulation, but it's a little too light for me (though again, that is solid for emulating genre). 90s Cringe Rock posted:The capitalisation of four out of a hundred entries for no apparent reason hurts. Do you not know the difference between Quantum and quantum? Surely you understand the distinction between Osmotic and osmotic. Right? Pieces of Peace posted:If you can find a copy of it somewhere, the Adventurer's Guide to Eberron was released in 3.5 but is purely a "visual guide" with no stats that just talks about the locations, nations, and major players of the setting. Very good, probably the only Eberron book I should hold onto. The recently-released Eberronicon isn't a great primer, but is a fantastic system-less reference.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:23
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While we're on the 2d20 subject, has anyone here played Mutant Chronicles 3e? I got it and a bunch of splatbooks in a bundle and it looks interesting to run, but I get the impression it's trying pretty hard to straddle sci-fi horror with kicking down doors with a big machine gun and shoulderpads.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:51
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There's a part of me that does like random generation in character creation, but I am a firm believer that it needs to be for non-essential stuff. Or alternatively, if you're going more OD&D where most of the game is combat, most ability scores have no effect on combat, and there's an intentional churning of PCs in killer dungeons, which allows the strong to rise to the top. In a more character-driven game (either mechanically or narratively), it just doesn't make any sense.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:58
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Splicer posted:D&D should have no ability scores. You've got races, classes, archetypes, skills, backgrounds, and feats to say how strong, agile, tough, smart, wise, or charismatic your guy is. All the scores do is get in the way. It isn't even just that the scores get in the way, it's that in D&D, most of the 'choices' you can make are a choice between 'be useful' or 'be bad'. Many characters get nothing out of their stats beyond a minor edge case bump to a skill they won't be able to raise to useful levels anyway, and so to maintain the illusion that it's cool to play a Fighter with good Charisma or something, you maintain the ability to put points into stats that will make you bad at everything you're supposed to do. This is because D&D's design is very constrained by the need to specialize but the desire to pretend you don't have to.
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Jan 24, 2020 22:02
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