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SunAndSpring posted:Sure wish more people would recruit for games during this crisis, I'm so bored. I wanted to do one, but I'm waiting for Cortex Prime to get its print candidate out
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Mar 25, 2020 00:45
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I'm playing in two roll20 games and my friends roped me into running a third one. It's gonna be a L5R game inspired by Makai Tensho.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:46
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Ilor posted:There are two parallel problems here. First, you are absolutely correct that many of the follow-on hacks do a terrible job of explaining how they should be run. I'd count Blades as "decent," but it has a host of other glaring issues (like leaving a lot of filling in the world's detail up to the GM and players without explicitly telling them where or how). But second, a whole lot of people just don't loving read. You could have no experience with these kinds of games, pick up the book for BitD, and run a pretty sweet game if you followed the actual direction of how to play the game. But people don't seem to want to do that, and as a result most of the criticisms stem form fundamental misunderstandings of how the game actually works - not because it's not explained, but because it wasn't read or comprehended. Because people bring in their preconceived notions of what it means to "run a game" and never realize that it's not that. I bounced real hard off AW a couple times, and then I actually read the whole book and now it's one of my favorites to run. Also, I have been playing ttrpgs since 1988. The Blades game I finished a couple months ago was in the top 5 games I have ever played in, and it was run by a schoolteacher who'd not previously played, let alone run, a ttrpg who learned it entirely out of the book without any help. e: This is exactly backwards from the 4th ed thing though - That's people who couldn't handle a small incremental change to what they knew refusing to accept that it's very similar. This is people encountering something that shares almost nothing in common with what they know and insisting that it's close enough that they don't really need to learn it. They're exactly the same in that I also bounced off 4th ed real hard a couple times before settling down and reading the book. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Mar 25, 2020 |
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Mar 25, 2020 01:57
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SunAndSpring posted:Sure wish more people would recruit for games during this crisis, I'm so bored.
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Mar 25, 2020 02:31
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:I bounced real hard off AW a couple times, and then I actually read the whole book and now it's one of my favorites to run. Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Also, I have been playing ttrpgs since 1988. The Blades game I finished a couple months ago was in the top 5 games I have ever played in, and it was run by a schoolteacher who'd not previously played, let alone run, a ttrpg who learned it entirely out of the book without any help.
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Mar 25, 2020 02:39
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Ilor posted:I'm going to go out on a limb and say your schoolteacher friend was probably helped by the fact that he or she was coming to it fresh without any preconceptions to get in the way. That was the point I was trying to make, yeah. She's also one of those people that's extremely good at dividing their attention between others while keeping those others focused on them. And yeah, pbta games are my go-to for brand new players too. The concept of the conversation makes for extremely natural mutual storytelling, as does the fiction-first "describe what your character's dong and then check to see if a rule activates" nature of the game.
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Mar 25, 2020 02:51
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I spent the whole day happy as a pig in mud working on stuff for my VtR and OSE games. Got all the melee weapons for B/X rewritten for Forgotten Realms compatibility now!
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Mar 25, 2020 03:58
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Arivia posted:I spent the whole day happy as a pig in mud working on stuff for my VtR and OSE games. Got all the melee weapons for B/X rewritten for Forgotten Realms compatibility now! Dude, solid. I need to use this time to, uh, READ some of the books on my shelf. OSE and Black Hack are high on the list.
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Mar 25, 2020 04:05
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:Dude, solid. I need to use this time to, uh, READ some of the books on my shelf. OSE and Black Hack are high on the list. OSE is real real good. Not gonzo, just classic old school goodness. With the Advanced Genre books, it’s a great fit for what I want - B/X with 1e added in to run basically 1e FR.
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Mar 25, 2020 04:06
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SunAndSpring posted:Sure wish more people would recruit for games during this crisis, I'm so bored. After April 15th, I might playtest my urban fantasy trans superhero game, The Lost.
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Mar 25, 2020 04:08
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I'm in the middle of a game design contest, but I have been trying to talk my friends into some online dragoning because we can't meet up. The response has been that they'd play D&D 3.5 because they don't want to learn a new system if we're playing online. Makes me want to scream.
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Mar 25, 2020 04:44
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Moar free deals I dug up from Reddit.  All of Daring Entertainment's 90 titles are FREE. Mostly Supers, Zombies and Apocalypse stuff from a cursory review. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2604/Daring-Entertainment Amazing Tales RPG for kids is also FREE https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/307521/Amazing-Tales-Quickstart Subway Runners, a Forged in the Dark RPG, is FREE Scroll all the way down. https://gemroomgames.itch.io/subwayrunners quote:Life is tough for the cash-strapped in Pociopolis. Ever since the secret to immortality was discovered, nobody retires anymore! With all the steady jobs taken and no sign of any new ones opening up, there’s only one sure way to make some quick cash: sign up as a Subway Runner and work for the Metro Authority to hunt monsters and repair subway lines below the city. Character generator: https://perchance.org/subwayrunners Gig generator: https://perchance.org/subwayrunnersgig Everything Else generator: https://perchance.org/runsubwayrunners
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Mar 25, 2020 05:38
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Ilor posted:I know PbtA is not your thing to run, but I'm probably going to run a viking-themed one-shot of Apocalypse World over Discord soon. If you want to jump in on that you're certainly welcome. I ain't them but that sounds extremely my poo poo and I am so god drat down if you want another player.
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Mar 25, 2020 05:51
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Beast Pussy posted:Are there any good RPGs focused on city building? With my group split up, I was thinking about trying to focus on them building up the town around their castle. Anything with rules for trading and conflict with other societies would be cool. Several quote:D&D
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Mar 25, 2020 06:21
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Regarding the reading thing. This post made me think a lot about my general hang ups with PbtA/FitD (again) and they come down to: a) the conversational nature of play is at risk of breaking down if some players are more charismatic than others. If there is someone who regularly wins conversations, that will just carry over to the game. A lot of the mechanics questions I’m asking because there are roughly three Charisma Supermen in local gaming, one of whom is a power gamer and the other a tactician (the third I have only ever known to GM) Without one of them, a game probably won’t even get off the ground. b) the basis of play on a conversation between the real persons amplifies the risk of stuff in the game bleeding over to OOC relationships exponentially. c) the assumption that the GM will never have a problem coming up with creative responses at the drop of a hat. None of the books, to my knowledge, deal with any of these.
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Mar 25, 2020 07:25
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hyphz posted:Regarding the reading thing. This post made me think a lot about my general hang ups with PbtA/FitD (again) and they come down to: I think A is true about most games, though it is certainly an issue, mostly managed by having a good gm that can help quiet people speak and make the louder ones take their turn instead of jumping all over the place. B is certainly true, and a lot of earlier PBTA games weren't good about that, but I think the industry is getting better about assuming and writing in safety tools- mechanics or just best practices to manage that kind of emotional bleedover. I can link you to a compilation of some of the common tools, if you'd like, I find they really help with that sort of thing in my games, PBTA and not?
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Mar 25, 2020 07:28
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hyphz posted:If there is someone who regularly wins conversations, that will just carry over to the game. ...how do you "win" a conversation?
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Mar 25, 2020 07:30
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SunAndSpring posted:I've played Blades and Spire, and have read a few of the others. I don't like the genre emulation so much because it's very rote and feels like I'm painting by the numbers. It was especially prevalent in Masks when I read it, since it's just so glaringly obvious where each playbook is cribbing from that it becomes boring. There's so little room to make a playbook your own, and I just find that baffling to do in a story game. You figure you'd want something more classless and less "I AM THE BURGER FLIPPER, I HAVE THE MOVE "GRILL THE HAMBURGER" BY DEFAULT AND MAY GAIN ONE OF FIVE TOTAL MOVES WHEN I HIT MY EXPERIENCE LIMIT". I'm really tired from other stuff so a full response is gonna wait a bit, but how were the players getting that many dice without bleeding stress? If you go crazy hog-wild you could have 3 in something, so everything else has to be expensive upgrades later or outside help. How was this happening routinely across all skills? Unless I'm blanking RAW the only way to get 4 dice at character creation is at least someone spending stress. And that's a finite resource that characters need for all sorts of things so I don't understand how this could happen if you were playing the game as designed. Also, I asked you about PbtA games and the two you cited (which are great and I love them) aren't really PbtA. Like, not doing some No True Scotsman poo poo, they, while heavily inspired by AW, are firmly doing their own things with that idea by now.
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Mar 25, 2020 07:38
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Zurui posted:...how do you "win" a conversation? browbeating the other people into giving up rather than letting the conversation turn into a fight/a therapy session focused on you/adopting your groundrules of a formal debate Or sometimes, just being charismatic so that two of the other people in the group automatically agree with you, so the person who disagrees feels outnumbered and doesn't want to make a fuss Personality conflicts can ruin a group dynamic and they're not always due to someone being an rear end in a top hat like in the first case. Formal game rules or informal table rules that ensure everyone has: a turn to speak, an opportunity to be in the spotlight for a moment, and the authority to make a key decision on behalf of the group, can all help... and freeform games run in away that doesn't provide those things can wind up excluding or shutting down a player inadvertently because of imbalanced personality types at the table.
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Mar 25, 2020 07:38
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Huh. Not that my groups haven't had any personality conflicts but we've never run into any of that sort of thing, fortunately. Most of our conflicts have centered around disproportionate player skill/narrative power, issues that PbtA games generally don't force us to deal with.
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Mar 25, 2020 07:47
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Actually, hell, i'll just link it for the thread in general because it's a useful resource. The support tools compilation is designed for dealing with conflicts or problems during your game- upsetting material coming up, too much bleed between in character and out of character, players getting genuinely upset at each other, and that sort of thing. I find by using some of these I have a much easier time exploring the stuff I want to in games, because I can trust myself and my fellow players to take care of each other, and resolve conflicts well. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T-4diHGaxlOy-N76rYmqYvLXkSV-dp_L3lSMZvb8Qqg/edit
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Mar 25, 2020 08:15
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Leperflesh posted:browbeating the other people into giving up rather than letting the conversation turn into a fight/a therapy session focused on you/adopting your groundrules of a formal debate You'll also find all of these people playing D&D. Or Monopoly. Or Uno. They aren't playing the game that's on the table, and nothing you could write into a rulebook would stop them from being pricks. e: Likewise, nothing in a rulebook's gonna stop two players sucking up to a third player at the expense of a fourth, or make sure that the one player who's just too meek to ever disagree with anything gets to disagree. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Mar 25, 2020 |
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Mar 25, 2020 08:59
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so, uh, the tabletop group I've been in every wednesday for 20-odd years can't meet anymore on account of the COVID-19 lockdown. Any good advice for playing on Discord? I'm primarily looking for a dice bot that can be renamed and handle d100s and other TRPG formats. Tias fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Mar 25, 2020 |
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Mar 25, 2020 12:10
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Tias posted:so, uh, the tabletop group I've been in every wednesday for 20-odd years can't meet anymore on account of the COVID-19 lockdown. I've found Sidekick to be pretty good: https://github.com/ArtemGr/Sidekick However, we tend to use Discord only for voice and organising/OOC chat and otherwise use roll20 for dice because several games have roll20 character sheets with dice macros.
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Mar 25, 2020 12:45
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Yeah, while you could play entirely through discord especially if you all will be playing off your existing character sheets there's something a little more fun about Roll20. Getting to see the dice roll across the screen(who actually turns that off?) plus the ability to doodle on the board is great.
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Mar 25, 2020 12:49
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I'd definitely advise roll20 if you use maps or boards at all. Discord with a dicebot is simpler for mapless play, though.
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Mar 25, 2020 12:51
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We're going to give FATE a shot via discord tomorrow. None of us have played the system and I'm running it, what should I know? Going with Atomic Robo if that makes a difference
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Mar 25, 2020 12:52
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Tias posted:so, uh, the tabletop group I've been in every wednesday for 20-odd years can't meet anymore on account of the COVID-19 lockdown. Your other option is to just trust people to roll their own dice at home and not lie about the results. Like, I get there's a certain something about dice rolling in the open, but for online play I generally just assume everyone's honest and let them do their own thing.
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Mar 25, 2020 12:59
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Ilor posted:Yeah, as near as I can figure any system which involves rolling one or more dice is "OSR" to drrockso. I don't even know what he means by the term anymore.
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Mar 25, 2020 13:26
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Len posted:We're going to give FATE a shot via discord tomorrow. None of us have played the system and I'm running it, what should I know? Use Sidekick (linked above). It has actual FATE dice support.
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Mar 25, 2020 13:29
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Antivehicular posted:I'd definitely advise roll20 if you use maps or boards at all. Discord with a dicebot is simpler for mapless play, though. Even for mapless games, I prefer roll20 whenever there are character sheets because it makes for a more convenient place to put all the resources rather than a shared Gdrive or just uploading it to Discord and pinning it. You also get a shared whiteboard if you need it. Len posted:We're going to give FATE a shot via discord tomorrow. None of us have played the system and I'm running it, what should I know? I would really recommend you only play with three aspects (High Concept, Trouble, and a free or relationship aspect) for your first few games just because coming up with five good aspects is a chore if you don't already know the system and the tone of whatever game you're running very well. Use a dice bot with Fuge die support, like Arivia said. I would actually recommend using Shadow of the Century instead of Atomic Robo (unless your players want the Atomic Robo IP) as it has the newest version of the Mode concept that started in Atomic Robo, with an existing list of Modes that each have pre-defined skills and stunts instead of requiring you to make those up. In general, I would say Shadow of the Century replaces Atomic Robo as the "default" modern-world Fate game.
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Mar 25, 2020 13:56
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I love Roll20. I never used to fiddle with portraits and stuff much until I used it for Fantasy Norwegian Mining Town vs. The Death Robots, but it's surprisingly fun to try to make things look nicer for the players and it can be very helpful to have the interactive character sheets and things people have uploaded.
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Mar 25, 2020 15:06
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Hey everybody, I remember folks talking about a game with a really good cult/mythos generator a little while back and I'm blanking hard on the name. I've got a buddy who wants to run some Lovecraftian stuff, and I'm trying to convince him to roll with something other than the traditional pantheon of gribblies. Also is the actual system it's attached to any good? What's everybody's pick for roaring 20s era action-horror other than OG Call of Cthulhu?
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Mar 25, 2020 15:46
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I haven't played it but if I remember right from people talking about it, isn't that Silent Legions?
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Mar 25, 2020 15:50
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:You'll also find all of these people playing D&D. Or Monopoly. Or Uno. They aren't playing the game that's on the table, and nothing you could write into a rulebook would stop them from being pricks. This is a false binary. It's not like they're instantly going to invert your personality, but if rules didn't shape these interactions, there'd be no reason to even have rules for narrative-first games. Also, the kind of behaviors that are naturally encouraged or blocked attract or repel certain players from certain games, which adds an extra layer of game -> experience influence even without affecting any one person directly.
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Mar 25, 2020 15:57
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Night10194 posted:I haven't played it but if I remember right from people talking about it, isn't that Silent Legions? Correct. So it's a Kevin Crawford/Sine Nomine game, which means it's a very particular thing: it's a sandbox game using Basic/Expert D&D as a base. Now, it's a very well done example of that, but it may not be what people are looking for for their Cthulhu games. The thing to realize is that Kevin Crawford's games are all about building your own worlds and sandboxes. He gives you random tables aplenty and tools and all sorts of things to do that, and he offers a lot of advice about converting/remixing/changing things up as you'd like (for example there's a luchadores against Cthulhu example campaign in Silent Legions). It's very well done. But it may not be the mechanical framework you want, and it may not be quite the right timeframe either (Silent Legions is modern, but you could change that). It also may not be the right playstyle - if Lovecraftian horror is specifically scripted stories to you, the Crawford sandbox model might not be as fun. Here's my honest advice. Buy Silent Legions: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145769/Silent-Legions no matter what; you can use the generative tables and lots of the advice, scene framing and so on no matter what setting. Read it through. Maybe you will like the rules, maybe you or your GM will want to add sci-fi stuff from Stars Without Number or classic old-school D&D. If you do like it, you can also add in Realms of Crawling Chaos (same base system) for a lot more Cthulhu Mythos stuff: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/87813/Realms-of-Crawling-Chaos-Labyrinth-Lord If you don't like it, you can still use the tables with Call of Cthulhu or whatever. In that case, I would recommend looking at the various GUMSHOE/Pelgrane horror games. One of them (Trail of Cthulhu) is specifically for Cthulhu Mythos games https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55567/Trail-of-Cthulhu?cPath=561_8982; Fear Itself is a more generic horror game https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197312/Fear-Itself-2nd-Edition?src=hottest_filtered; and the Esoterrorists is about investigators versus terrorists https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/123154/The-Esoterrorists-2nd-Edition?cPath=561_9314 I recommend GUMSHOE in particular because it's far and away the best ruleset for investigative games; it's the kind of system that rocked design so hard the most recent version of Call of Cthulhu took a look of cues from it to spruce up its own rules. That's your expanded world and your expanded systems right there; I hope you find what's right for you, and have fun with it!
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Mar 25, 2020 16:24
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Zurui posted:Huh. Not that my groups haven't had any personality conflicts but we've never run into any of that sort of thing, fortunately. Most of our conflicts have centered around disproportionate player skill/narrative power, issues that PbtA games generally don't force us to deal with. Really? I can see a big problem if one of the players is better at storytelling than the GM.
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Mar 25, 2020 16:33
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Arivia posted:Correct. So it's a Kevin Crawford/Sine Nomine game, which means it's a very particular thing: it's a sandbox game using Basic/Expert D&D as a base. Now, it's a very well done example of that, but it may not be what people are looking for for their Cthulhu games. Thanks a lot for the insight! It's been a pretty long time since I've played in something like this, so I figure I should check out some of the new hotness.
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Mar 25, 2020 16:46
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hyphz posted:Really? I can see a big problem if one of the players is better at storytelling than the GM. Having more good storytellers makes it better, not worse
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Mar 25, 2020 16:47
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Andrast posted:Having more good storytellers makes it better, not worse Provided they're also happy with coming up with obstacles for themselves and things don't become too dependent on them. I mean, I picked the term "Charisma Supermen" because the people involved aren't assholes at all, they're the kind of energetic person who's great to be around, and that's exactly why they're so restrictive. If a game doesn't meet with their approval, it's probably doomed, because it either won't recruit or will be doomed if they leave.
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Mar 25, 2020 17:24
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