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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:A combination of limited-use planning flashbacks and resources that grant temporary narrative control (in an area defined by the resource spent) to the player that spends them? Not going to lie, The Leverage RPG was going to be my example of a game that gets close to covering that conceptual space. I wouldn't call it a perfect fit by any means but it would be far from the worst jumping off point.
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Jan 30, 2020 10:00
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DalaranJ posted:How would one write a mechanical framework for "Clever Solution to Dangerous Situations"? Mage: The Awakening. Not joking. It's a game about using a mechanically robust system of both pre-defined and custom spells to solve narrative problems. That kind of gameplay was rightly jettisoned from 3.5E -> 4E, but if you wanted to play a game that's all about that and divides player agency much more equitably between roles? That's it. Best of all, everyone gets to be a wizard!
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Jan 30, 2020 10:26
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So the core book for Symbaroum is currently free in promotion for a new supplement that just came out, anyone want to tell me if Symbaroum is any good?
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Jan 30, 2020 11:44
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:A combination of limited-use planning flashbacks and resources that grant temporary narrative control (in an area defined by the resource spent) to the player that spends them? I'd say they'd be outright fatal if you want to play a game about players coming up with clever solutions, and the game is in the challenge of coming up with a solution to the scenario you are presented with, and you specifically want the reward of feeling clever when your plan turns out to work or the hilarity of watching your plan crash and burn if it doesn't work and feel like it'd be cheating to be able to do a planning flashback to take into account information you didn't actually have when you made the plan, and being able to take narrative control to say "Yeah, this works" would feel like short-circuiting the challenge. Some people after Clever Solutions To Dangerous Situations mean the former, some mean the latter.
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Jan 30, 2020 13:14
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Neither "limited use flashbacks" nor "temporary narrative control of a specific area" imply "you get to just declare that you win". E: I agree that stuff like Mage fits the bill, but Mage is a game built on giving yourself temporary narrative control in a specific area, and one of those areas lets you narrate flashbacks. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 13:48
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DalaranJ posted:How would one write a mechanical framework for "Clever Solution to Dangerous Situations"? edit to summarize: I think you'd want the flexibility of a generic granular scale of risk/effectiveness that you could measure any approach against taking into account fictional positioning to quite a fine degree. BitD does a very good job of this so is worth looking at even if it doesn't tick all the boxes of crunchiness and finding loopholes you're after Macdoo fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 14:09
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I’ve done one campaign in BitD and I’d be up to play another, but man I hate the setting a whole lot. Something about just rubs me the wrong way
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Jan 30, 2020 15:03
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I've literally never used the default setting and have always made up my own with the players. Or okay one time we just played in New Crobuzon. I think it's basically just there to pad out the book and so people have something to play in if they don't feel like coming up with a setting.
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Jan 30, 2020 15:19
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I'm considering Spire as a heists rather than revolutionary focused game
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Jan 30, 2020 16:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:I've literally never used the default setting and have always made up my own with the players. Or okay one time we just played in New Crobuzon. It's there because the actual mechanics in BitD are very dry, and the game ends up feeling very unsatisfying if the entire table doesn't have a strong, shared sense of place and tone. You can accomplish the same thing with any setting as long as everyone is on the same page, but having a detailed setting in the book helps for anyone who hasn't seen and read and played the game's thematic touchstones.
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Jan 30, 2020 16:32
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's there because the actual mechanics in BitD are very dry, and the game ends up feeling very unsatisfying if the entire table doesn't have a strong, shared sense of place and tone. You can accomplish the same thing with any setting as long as everyone is on the same page, but having a detailed setting in the book helps for anyone who hasn't seen and read and played the game's thematic touchstones. Sorry, I was being flip. I agree entirely we just always have a pretty strong session 0 unless we are very specifically going for a setting so I was joshing the idea of being married to the default setting. Unless I'm misremembering the book is pretty explicit in saying "Yeah here we gave you a setting if you want one but you should make up your own or change this until you're happy or whatever this is a placeholder".
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Jan 30, 2020 16:50
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Neither "limited use flashbacks" nor "temporary narrative control of a specific area" imply "you get to just declare that you win".
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Jan 30, 2020 16:52
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Lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth to discover that 3e is still bad.drrockso20 posted:So the core book for Symbaroum is currently free in promotion for a new supplement that just came out, anyone want to tell me if Symbaroum is any good? Mechanically, there are multiple fun magic paths and fighting styles. Some are better than others, but the main flaw is that if the players know how to build, PCs can become overpowered very quickly.
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Jan 30, 2020 16:54
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I'd say a key requirement for a no backsies problem solving system is a robust casing and investigation mechanic.
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Jan 30, 2020 16:58
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Meinberg posted:I’ve been wracking my head on this for a bit, and I think it’s Mouse Guard. “Fight!” specifically, or the entire system together? Thanks, everyone, for your answers. I read them all.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:33
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Mr. Maltose posted:Not going to lie, The Leverage RPG was going to be my example of a game that gets close to covering that conceptual space. I wouldn't call it a perfect fit by any means but it would be far from the worst jumping off point. I wish this were a better and more fleshed-out game, because its pitch is great and it does a fantastic job of capturing the feel of the show as a result. It just has a bunch of needlessly complex dice junk in it, and not a whole lot after you get through that part.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:33
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's there because the actual mechanics in BitD are very dry, and the game ends up feeling very unsatisfying if the entire table doesn't have a strong, shared sense of place and tone. You can accomplish the same thing with any setting as long as everyone is on the same page, but having a detailed setting in the book helps for anyone who hasn't seen and read and played the game's thematic touchstones. Absolutely agreed. A sample setting in a core rulebook helps me a lot in deciding to run that game (and was one of my biggest complaints with Strike!, for example.) One of D&D 4e's best decisions was putting a good starting setting right in the core rulebooks.
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Jan 30, 2020 17:38
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Splicer posted:I'd say a key requirement for a no backsies problem solving system is a robust casing and investigation mechanic. Yeah, pretty much. Perhaps also a task resolution system akin to PbtA's pass/pass-with-complication/fail, where the pass window is much broader and the pass-with-complication window is much narrower so long as you're taking actions accounted for in your planning, and the reverse is true once things go off-plan (so if your plan works perfectly and smoothly you get the "I love it when a plan comes together" satisfaction of things going off without a hitch, but once things go south and everyone starts improvising the situation becomes increasingly chaotic).
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Jan 30, 2020 17:42
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 Osprey is having an upto 70% off sale on a bunch of books, including wargaming manuals, until the end of Febuary. Finding the deals does take a bit of searching the website but they are there : https://ospreypublishing.com/store/osprey-games/  I'm getting two fictional books on the Cthulhu Mythos vs armies in history.  
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Jan 30, 2020 18:57
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Don't overlook that Osprey sale, their historical books can be fantastic references, often better than you'll find on a Wikipedia safari and easier to reference. I got a ridiculous amount of value of Japanese castles for an Exalted game, for instance, just by being able to throw new and detailed visual references at the players every time they had a kung fu battle on the battlements of a fortress - which, being Exalted, happened a lot.
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Jan 30, 2020 19:30
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Mage: The Awakening. Warthur posted:My feeling is that this is less a factor of game mechanics than it is of scenario design, so the best way to support it is to provide robust scenario design tools and also really strong guidance on adjudicating unexpected PC plans.
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Jan 30, 2020 19:35
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's there because the actual mechanics in BitD are very dry, and the game ends up feeling very unsatisfying if the entire table doesn't have a strong, shared sense of place and tone. You can accomplish the same thing with any setting as long as everyone is on the same page, but having a detailed setting in the book helps for anyone who hasn't seen and read and played the game's thematic touchstones. I ran BitD as a newbie GM for a group of very reactive newbie players, and my experience was that the setting did at least as much heavy lifting as the mechanics did. Just having a big pile of plot hooks, characters to attach them to, and some questions guiding how to connect any two dots made it easy to find something for the players to do even when they didn't have ideas themselves. There's plenty of stuff you can reasonably dislike about the setting (for one thing I still wish it had a stronger elevator pitch), but it does what it does very well. I'm a real big fan of the "grab a handful of agents and work out for yourself how they relate to each other" style of worldbuilding.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:05
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Awakening absolutely does that kind of puzzle solving as well, it just has a more coherent system of magic. I'm not sure why you'd specify against it.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:41
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Mage: The Awakening. This is absolutely true, especially in 2nd edition, where every spell has to be customized before being cast. It's perfect for that group of players who try to beat D&D encounters with a bag of holding and an immovable rod.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:58
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Octavo posted:This is absolutely true, especially in 2nd edition, where every spell has to be customized before being cast. It's perfect for that group of players who try to beat D&D encounters with a bag of holding and an immovable rod. In actually running it, it was a lot of fun to see players go from throwing as many dice at the spell as possible, to get as much damage as possible on a direct attack, to using elaborate curses, transmutations, and tricks to deal with specific conditions. The system does limit the choices you have when you're rushed IC, so if the GM is willing to do a lot of the same brain math they can produce effects pretty quickly in action sequences, and then spend downtime constructing elaborate rituals to eke out the weird spells they want. One player created a permanent secondary personality for her PC out of said PC's Vice, in order to more effectively pretend to be a traitor to her organization and play the double agent. It's a fun game.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:03
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Joe Slowboat posted:In actually running it, it was a lot of fun to see players go from throwing as many dice at the spell as possible, to get as much damage as possible on a direct attack, to using elaborate curses, transmutations, and tricks to deal with specific conditions. That's really amazing.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:08
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Joe Slowboat posted:Awakening absolutely does that kind of puzzle solving as well, it just has a more coherent system of magic. Awakening actually does that much better so I'm guessing some variety of grog is the answer.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:20
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Xiahou Dun posted:Awakening actually does that much better so I'm guessing some variety of grog is the answer. Entropy was at it's strongest when you used coincidental magic to just happen to have prepped for something. There were even published rotes in the technocracy books that were based on that.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:28
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Entropy was probably the worst sphere in Ascension. It's like they didn't know what to do with it.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:32
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Coolness Averted posted:Entropy was at it's strongest when you used coincidental magic to just happen to have prepped for something. There were even published rotes in the technocracy books that were based on that. Awakening would do this with Fate or Time, presumably? I guess it doesn't give an explicit bonus to this particular trick, but it's definitely something the system supports well. Plus some weirder tricks, like redefining something that isn't the correct tool for the job as the correct tool (high-level Fate, if I remember correctly) and gives a significant bonus to somehow making it through the problem using that tool. Which seems like a great support for weird, impractical 'mundane' solutions.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:35
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I know people usually see it as a terrible terrible game decision but I thought having Save Point in Mage: The Awakening was amazing.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:39
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Halloween Jack posted:Entropy was probably the worst sphere in Ascension. It's like they didn't know what to do with it. It was absolutely the worst designed sphere yeah. IIRC the spheres were ● -sense and read the sphere ●● -influence the sphere ●●● create new instance of the sphere ●●●● alter the sphere 'by its rules' ●●●●● alter the sphere 'breaking its rules' And for most that was the ranking in power and also you'd usually have to go vulgar to do really useful stuff. Half of entropy was dumb 'death and decay' the other was luck and probability. Yeah using 1 dot of entropy to see ghosts was totally on par with sensing heat, life, or whatever. Using it to perfectly determine the probability of a given event not so much. Using 2 dots to influence and the outcome of a event to something actually probable also was a pretty big deal, nearly game breaking if handled right. Meanwhile the second half of the tree was junk like 'do aggravated damage, repair broken stuff, or become immune to aging, oh yeah but all of this is incredibly vulgar magic" Whereas unless you just kept winning the lottery forever, or always win no matter what, you'd almost never risk paradox from probability manipulation or observation, since it was almost always coincidental.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:54
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Coolness Averted posted:Half of entropy was dumb 'death and decay' the other was luck and probability. Yeah using 1 dot of entropy to see ghosts was totally on par with sensing heat, life, or whatever. Using it to perfectly determine the probability of a given event not so much. Entropy is basically a Paradigm written up as a Sphere.
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Jan 30, 2020 22:00
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Coolness Averted posted:It was absolutely the worst designed sphere yeah. IIRC the spheres were And then when you look at the Rotes in the sourcebooks, Entropy is just tossed in there as a requirement if the rote is related to luck or to spooky stuff. (I had always thought the point of combining Spheres was to achieve the same effect in different ways, not to gatekeep you from doing anything unless you have every applicable Sphere.) Like, the Hollow Ones sourcebook has a Rote that summons a kickass grim reaper spirit, and it requires Entropy 5 because.
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Jan 30, 2020 22:13
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm going off of memory here, so as I recall, each level of Entropy beyond the first implied that you should use it to imitate other spheres, with Entropy 5 imitating Mind. It really depended on the author of the book, and yeah some had no imagination and just did 'oh entropy is the weird psuedo sphere that just imitates others,' some went with 'it's luck so level 1 and 2 can do anything' and a few tried to respond to that with 'Uh wait that's not fair.. you need to tack entropy 1 or 2 onto level 4 or 5 of other spheres to do that!' Although I'm only talking about 2nd edition 3rd might have changed things. I think vampire, hunter, and werewolf were the only core 3e books I had for oWoD.
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Jan 30, 2020 22:24
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So can anyone tell me if these are the Chessex dice filled with the magic pixie dust that collectors pay out the nose for? It's not a complete set, but I've had these forever. 
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Jan 31, 2020 02:14
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Whatever happened to that Ask/Tell Chessex thread, anyway?
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Jan 31, 2020 02:41
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Whatever happened to that Ask/Tell Chessex thread, anyway?
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Jan 31, 2020 02:48
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Are there any good games about hunting down and killing supernatural creatures, more specifically vampires? I got into an argument with a friend about vamps and now I’m feeling like reading about staking the pointy teethed bastards
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Jan 31, 2020 08:42
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I've been seeing a lot on my social media timeline about iHunt, which is a Fate-based monster hunting game. It sounds interesting, at least. Monster of the Week is a PBTA hack that does the Buffy style of vampire / random monster hunting thing pretty well from what I've seen.
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Jan 31, 2020 08:51
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