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also frankly I just hate it any time an ability offers up a trade like "+X hard, clearly defined mechanical advantage, -Y incredibly fuzzy, vague judgment call the GM has to make in every single session" those should not be purchased with the same currency, it's poo poo game design even before you ask what it represents narratively it can go in the wastebin next to "+X damage to a specific type of enemy, no we will not be providing any guidance on how often that type of enemy should show up"
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Dec 14, 2020 02:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:also frankly I just hate it any time an ability offers up a trade like "+X hard, clearly defined mechanical advantage, -Y incredibly fuzzy, vague judgment call the GM has to make in every single session" Yeah, Shadowrun has had a huge issue with this sort of design for literal decades, it always used to give you extra points and stuff for things like "being allergic to silver" but the idea that it's trying to balance which race you pick by how racist people are against them is awful on an entire layer cake of levels, especially when you consider that Shadowrun's handling of matters like racism has universally been dogshit. Why do orks and trolls have charisma penalties anyway? It's like they want to put a fig leaf of "oh it's not innate, it's just society's prejudices" while using the exact same framing as every other game that chalks it up to biological determinism anyway. Slapping a new coat of paint on a fundamentally bad concept doesn't make it better.
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Dec 14, 2020 02:45
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CitizenKeen posted:When doing Lines and Veils, racism has been a Line for one of my tables. Not, like, "don't be racist", but rather "I don't want to have to think about or deal with racism for the next three hours". Any game that bakes it in is right out. yeah I deal with racism enough in real life. Anything more realistic than an occasional unimportant rear end in a top hat NPC who just really hates Tieflings or Elves to a comical degree or something. If the story ever becomes about fantasy Racism I'm completely out. That poo poo happened out of nowhere in a Roll20 pug game I played in and I instantly bounced.
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Dec 14, 2020 02:45
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People that write and play games often gently caress up their depictions of racism as well. If the depiction is just "people are rude and nasty to you, except maybe this one character who's Woke actually" with no thought paid to systematic effects, then it's coming off as naive at best.
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Dec 14, 2020 03:24
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:also frankly I just hate it any time an ability offers up a trade like "+X hard, clearly defined mechanical advantage, -Y incredibly fuzzy, vague judgment call the GM has to make in every single session" Yeah, narrative flaws in exchange for mechanical advantages are essentially freebies in most games, doubly so if it's something like "Enemy". PCs are going to have problems anyway, so that's just giving a player the power to choose one of the problems that will come up on the reg, if the GM even remembers to use that. I think flaws that give a metacurrency bonus when they're procced are a much better design approach. And yeah, super agree on that latter one too, just absolute rubbish unless you can change your favored enemy during the campaign.
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Dec 14, 2020 04:07
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Zereth posted:I think the 1e -> 3e trajectory was improving the system, but then they started making much bigger, more sweeping changes and, well. The second revision of 4e, 20th Anniversary, was balanced and good as well. Even if I didn't like the setting changes. Then it went to Catalyst, and they put Jason Hardy, a guy with no experience other than a little freelancing on SR and Battletech in charge of the line. It has been straight downhill since because he is in no way a competent line editor or game designer.
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Dec 14, 2020 07:13
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Kai Tave posted:Nobody HAS to drink Mad Dog 20/20 either, and yet. oh i disagree, there are certain circumstances in life people can be going through that makes drinking MD20/20 perfectly acceptable and logical i can never say the same thing about Shadowrun
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Dec 14, 2020 09:28
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NGDBSS posted:That must be a very low bar because Mechwarrior Destiny was written by the same hacks who made Shadowrun Anarchy and it shows. I've never seen Shadowrun Anarchy. In what ways?
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Dec 14, 2020 13:41
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I could take a guess at why people hate the new Shadowrun based on the previous one I played, but it's hard to take it sucks/it's good at face value without some details.Kai Tave posted:Yeah, Shadowrun has had a huge issue with this sort of design for literal decades, it always used to give you extra points and stuff for things like "being allergic to silver" but the idea that it's trying to balance which race you pick by how racist people are against them is awful on an entire layer cake of levels, especially when you consider that Shadowrun's handling of matters like racism has universally been dogshit. Why do orks and trolls have charisma penalties anyway? It's like they want to put a fig leaf of "oh it's not innate, it's just society's prejudices" while using the exact same framing as every other game that chalks it up to biological determinism anyway. Slapping a new coat of paint on a fundamentally bad concept doesn't make it better. Shadowrun at one time could be considered somewhat forward-thinking compared to D&D, in that racism, religion, and culture as you or I would begin to understand them were real topics at all instead of toggles on your character's build. I think for many players it was their first foray into cyberpunk, which remains a pretty inviting space for games that are political but fun. Lots of games have problems with mixing hard mechanical penalties/bonuses with soft roleplaying things, and any system with "demerits" or whatever will have players trying to game them with the implicit expectation that it is up to the GM to gently caress the character over at the most inopportune moment possible (because it's described as a flat drawback rather than a layer of complexity). Generally back in the day for my groups the detente became to just not touch the flaw section in Vampire. YMMV.
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Dec 14, 2020 14:03
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Lots of games have problems with mixing hard mechanical penalties/bonuses with soft roleplaying things, and any system with "demerits" or whatever will have players trying to game them with the implicit expectation that it is up to the GM to gently caress the character over at the most inopportune moment possible (because it's described as a flat drawback rather than a layer of complexity). Generally back in the day for my groups the detente became to just not touch the flaw section in Vampire. YMMV. With my players, the understanding was that when you took flaws, you were telling me (or the DM, on those rare occasions that it isn't me) that you want me to mess with your character using that flaw. Or, as one of my players put it rather bluntly, "If it's on my sheet, I want it to matter." So I rather like those sections, since in my group they're a huge flag for what they want their characters' individual struggles to feature. Of course, my group also wouldn't touch Shadowrun for anything, so I have no experience with how that specific implementation of the idea would work out. Given how many queer/PoC people play in my group, I suspect poorly; for most of them, the closest we'd want to come to that would be something like Spire.
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Dec 14, 2020 14:37
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Liquid Communism posted:The second revision of 4e, 20th Anniversary, was balanced and good as well. Even if I didn't like the setting changes. Really? Grenades bouncing back up stairs and being unusable Avoid hacking by mugging everyone for their cellphone, but anything below military grade hardware is trivial Huge chargen traps Caster supremacy out the wazoo
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Dec 14, 2020 17:27
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hyphz posted:Really? That's right, the best Shadowrun edition.
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Dec 14, 2020 17:51
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Mystic Mongol posted:That's right, the best Shadowrun edition. Don’t forget “people with fast reflexes stopping in the middle of sprints between cover to get shot at” which I think was new to 4th.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:09
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PoptartsNinja posted:I've never seen Shadowrun Anarchy. Anarchy is literally unfinished and nonfunctional as a game.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:55
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Lemon-Lime posted:Anarchy is literally unfinished and nonfunctional as a game. It's one of the dumbest books I own. No character creation and any thought that the game was going to be "Shadowrun but runs faster" goes out the window the second you learn how to assemble die pools.
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Dec 14, 2020 19:18
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hyphz posted:Really? 2. This is like someone saying a problem with D&D 3e is you have to take every wizard's component pouch to keep him from mind controlling you. It's random, nonsensical, and suggests you have no idea what the actual problems are. 3. Welcome to point-based char gen systems. 4. Yes and they made it somewhat worse in 4e by buffing spirits. Mystic Mongol posted:That's right, the best Shadowrun edition.
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Dec 14, 2020 19:25
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Lemon-Lime posted:Anarchy is literally unfinished and nonfunctional as a game.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:14
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The allergy thing and downsides of that ilk have always been nonsense in any game that doesn't have guidelines for it. Some Swedish Noir game has "at this level it should pop up once a scene" or something which at least makes it so you're not waiting for the GM to go "no, now is the time for the milk filled super soakers to shoot you" or whatever the hell you picked.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:28
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90s Cringe Rock posted:There doesn't seem to have been an F&F, but I would love to know more, even if it's just incoherent yelling. Seconding this, I remember the release but conversation died off fast and I never did buy it. Side note, going to try and get one or two more Red Markets posts out this week, but IRL circumstances are gonna put a block in for a bit. Don't worry, not abandoning it.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:38
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90s Cringe Rock posted:There doesn't seem to have been an F&F, but I would love to know more, even if it's just incoherent yelling. I think the most accurate F&F would be one line reading "Do cyberpunk. Low effort."
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Dec 14, 2020 21:57
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A group I was in's attempt at playing Shadowrun Anarchy ended in one session when a Technomancer tried to summon a sprite (internet spirit). Queue us immediately finding out there were no stats for sprites in the book, and just immediately bailing for another system in disgust. (They were eventually added in eratta, but they're incredibly half-assed and there's so many other issues.)
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Dec 14, 2020 22:17
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FrozenGoldfishGod posted:With my players, the understanding was that when you took flaws, you were telling me (or the DM, on those rare occasions that it isn't me) that you want me to mess with your character using that flaw. Or, as one of my players put it rather bluntly, "If it's on my sheet, I want it to matter." So I rather like those sections, since in my group they're a huge flag for what they want their characters' individual struggles to feature. I agree that having the ability to flag to your GM "This is a thing I want to gently caress with my character" is a good thing -- but it shouldn't be a disadvantage that gives you more points that you can spend on improving your character. Character traits that create enemies for you grant you narrative agency: the party was always going to have enemies, so taking the flaw just means that you get to dictate what the party's enemies are like and allows your character to take more time in the spotlight. Again, this doesn't mean they shouldn't be in a game -- just that they shouldn't be balanced out with merits which also give your character an advantage or more time in the spotlight.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:55
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Demerit systems are fine, my issue is specifically on trade-offs with uncertain impact vs. certain impact. It means the actual value of the trait is constantly in flux in a way that makes more work for the GM and less agency for the player. The solution is either a) give clear guidance on how often the drawback should come up, in which case the value is always fixed or b) the positive side of the trait should come up in equal proportion to the negative side (like compels or action points), in which case the value is always proportionate.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:24
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Just realized the design studio behind Degenesis is the same studio that makes all the art for Legends of Runeterra (the LoL cards game).
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Dec 15, 2020 00:46
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Shadowrun always sounded interesting but kind of dumb as hell to actually play. A bit like Mage.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:55
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CitizenKeen posted:Just realized the design studio behind Degenesis is the same studio that makes all the art for Legends of Runeterra (the LoL cards game). Yes, SixMoreVodka is an art studio first and an RPG studio second. They're very good at one of these things.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:33
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Josef bugman posted:Shadowrun always sounded interesting but kind of dumb as hell to actually play. A bit like Mage. It's pretty telling that while D&D's systems can, at least in approximate forms, work okay as PC games, the Shadowrun CRPGs don't even bother using any version of the tabletop system and just do their own thing.
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Dec 15, 2020 06:14
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PoptartsNinja posted:I've never seen Shadowrun Anarchy. In what ways?  . And even mech combat consists of the participants rolling dice at each other until one side goes down, because all your meaningful choices happen with weapon selection. There are things that look like choices until you analyze them, like how hit locations almost never add anything besides more rolls or how heat should never go above 1. So what about weapon selection? Well, the rules are at best a boring optimization problem and at worst have some active holes because the game doesn't say what happens if you don't stick weapons in weapon groups or tell you how many weapons you're actually allowed to have. Actually getting more weapons, bigger mechs because you're not choosing between one big mech or several smaller ones like it's the wargame, or even repairing your mech at all requires precious XP. (No you're not refunded for selling off old parts or scrap.) And to top that off the game has zero guidelines on how to structure mech combat encounters or how to handle people who got suckered into taking civilian vehicles so the GM is left to make things up. The rules genuinely fail to support a core gameplay loop, and that's an extremely low bar to clear.
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Dec 15, 2020 06:42
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Josef bugman posted:Shadowrun always sounded interesting but kind of dumb as hell to actually play. A bit like Mage. I dunno how Ascension is but Awakening 2e is pretty playable. The hardest parts are getting to learn the freeform magic system, there's not really anything for it but time (and there's a web-based calculator that's handy). You do need to be pretty good at improvising though, since beyond starting character stuff PCs will be doing stuff like "hmm this seems like I can generate infinite mana" and "I think I will go to the local cancer ward and see how much I can surreptitiously cure" and you just gotta either roll with that or be open about how wide your intended plot is.
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Dec 15, 2020 09:05
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https://deadline.com/2020/12/chris-pine-dungeons-and-dragons-movie-jonathan-goldstein-john-francis-daley-direct-eone-paramount-1234656156/
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Dec 15, 2020 11:00
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:https://deadline.com/2020/12/chris-pine-dungeons-and-dragons-movie-jonathan-goldstein-john-francis-daley-direct-eone-paramount-1234656156/ quote:Goldstein & Daley had been set in 2019 to direct a film that to feature an ensemble cast and take a subversive approach to the game. Oh wow, a subversive approach to making a D&D movie, never heard that one before. 2020's wrapping up soon so I guess I'll throw my Hail Mary prediction out into the aether: this movie is going to flop extremely hard and then sometime within the next 1-3 years afterward Disney will buy D&D from Hasbro in their ongoing quest to own every media property in existence.
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Dec 15, 2020 11:55
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Just let Vin Diesel make a film telling us about his character. It'll probably be a janky cult classic failure at best, but at least someone will be happy.
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Dec 15, 2020 12:00
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FELL'S FIVE THE MOVIE *banging on the table* FELL'S FIVE THE MOVIE
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Dec 15, 2020 12:01
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Just let Vin Diesel make a film telling us about his character. It'll probably be a janky cult classic failure at best, but at least someone will be happy. This is literally The Last Witchhunter.
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Dec 15, 2020 12:14
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GimpInBlack posted:This is literally The Last Witchhunter.
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Dec 15, 2020 12:31
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Gobbeldygook posted:3. Welcome to point-based char gen systems.  at this as a false truisme: and that's assuming you mean things like "dumping half your points into dex and the rest of your points into things that key off brawn", if we're talking about some options just being trash that is a whole other layer of avoidable Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 12:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:FELL'S FIVE THE MOVIE *banging on the table in unison*
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Dec 15, 2020 13:16
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Kai Tave posted:Oh wow, a subversive approach to making a D&D movie, never heard that one before. What even counts as a subversive approach anyway? Using Fourth Edition cosmology? Oh no it's the story of a human warlord who died and became an exalted of Bahamut and now he's got to gather his old adventuring crew (some living, some not) to pilot the First Ark Out of Celestia and bring hope to the people lost outside the lattice of heaven!
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Dec 15, 2020 16:51
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Glazius posted:What even counts as a subversive approach anyway? Using Fourth Edition cosmology? 10 to 1 they just rip off Jumanji.
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Dec 15, 2020 17:04
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Glazius posted:What even counts as a subversive approach anyway? Using Fourth Edition cosmology? The Whizzard extended universe edition.
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