|
Coolness Averted posted:I wanted to like that game more than I did. The setting and story were so silly, but it was so janky. Permadeath and only having Herbert as a source of revives combined with poo poo like landminds just turned me off utterly. Sounds like how I felt about Hard West, on the topic of tactics games. Less overtly "D&D with cowboys" weird west? Tactical combat? Special mechanics that are actually pretty neat? Cool - oh, the actual mechanics aren't so good, and the performance is awful, hmmm... Another "should have been a TTRPG".
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 17:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 10:33 |
|
|
tokenbrownguy posted:How dare you all forget Dinosaurs... IN SPACE! I didn't! It's fine, it's just more of a corny 50's sci-fi RPG. Not dinosaur focused enough. I gotta have more dinosaur. ...Also synapsids and pterosaurs can be there.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 17:41
|
|
|
FFT posted:Obviously you're asking for more but "Blood Bowl-but-only-humans" would be pretty close. Yeah I've played shitloads of blood bowl, and it's a lot of fun, but not quite what I'm describing. As an american football nerd who plays not just fantasy football, but runs a custom dynasty fantasy football league with IDP; I want the ridiculous tactical depth that exists in the real game. Or whatever is as close as you can get while not becoming a Campaign for North Africa insanityfest where it takes in real life months to play out a single football game.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 17:53
|
|
|
I would definitely like to see a tactical combat RPG that makes playing as individual members of a JRPG party actually fun. (Or, hell, treat each PC as a fireteam leader.)
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 17:55
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I would definitely like to see a tactical combat RPG that makes playing as individual members of a JRPG party actually fun. (Or, hell, treat each PC as a fireteam leader.) Can you please expand on that?
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 18:46
|
|
|
In JRPGs, you're playing the whole party. Individual characters usually don't have many options; some are designed to repeat one command as often as possible. Like, imagine playing an FF3 Dragoon--your job is to choose Jump, spend the next turn doing nothing, then land a big attack and choose Jump again. Forever.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 18:57
|
|
|
D&D 4E would already play extremely well as a JRPG, it's got the whole idea of individual characters whose abilities feed into each other down pat, and its magic abilities that summon down actual angels from the heavens for a one-round buff effect map very well to a genre where mages can conjure fireblasts, elaborately summon thunder gods and trigger supernovae multiple times in a fight, each of which abilities will leave some HP damage that's easily cured with a magic potion.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 19:20
|
|
|
quote:your job is to choose Jump, spend the next turn doing nothing, then land a big attack and choose Jump again. Forever. But it's nice work if you can get it!
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 19:21
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:D&D 4E would already play extremely well as a JRPG, it's got the whole idea of individual characters whose abilities feed into each other down pat, and its magic abilities that summon down actual angels from the heavens for a one-round buff effect map very well to a genre where mages can conjure fireblasts, elaborately summon thunder gods and trigger supernovae multiple times in a fight, each of which abilities will leave some HP damage that's easily cured with a magic potion. Everyone takes a ten-minute snack break while the GM describes the boss' ultimate attack destroying the solar system
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 19:29
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:In JRPGs, you're playing the whole party. Individual characters usually don't have many options; some are designed to repeat one command as often as possible. But Dragoons on FFTA and FFTA2 (which a tactical tabletop should emulate) have a plethora of poo poo to do. Absorb enemy hp with lancet, elemental breaths, anti-dragon special attacks...
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 19:31
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Everyone takes a ten-minute snack break while the GM describes the boss' ultimate attack destroying the solar system
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 19:41
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Yeah I've played shitloads of blood bowl, and it's a lot of fun, but not quite what I'm describing. As an american football nerd who plays not just fantasy football, but runs a custom dynasty fantasy football league with IDP; I want the ridiculous tactical depth that exists in the real game. Or whatever is as close as you can get while not becoming a Campaign for North Africa insanityfest where it takes in real life months to play out a single football game. OK terrible idea here but hear me out - Campaign for Campaign for North Africa. Competitive board game, possibly tactical, where you control members of a friend group that are trying to play Campaign for North Africa. Campaign for North Africa itself is unsimulated, all player control happens at the level of the sub-players. Outwardly all sub-players are motivated to play Campaign for North Africa, but all have their own agendas. Some just want to play and win Campaign for North Africa, some want to win Campaign for North Africa by exhausting the opposing team into a forfeit, some want to not play Campaign for North Africa they want to play MTG but are unable to simply say so out loud out of awkwardness, some actively want Campaign for North Africa to detonate the entire friend group out of impishness, some want to just show off their ability to make killer snacks. The actual players score points based on their ability to accomplish the goals of their sub-players, who themselves may not have unified agendas. Sub-players behave like characters in an tactical game, though positioning may not be particularly relevant.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 20:45
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Literally Actually American Football tactical boardgame. Faithful implementation of the rules as best as can be done practically. My left guard lines up in three-point stance. My edge rusher has the Quick Start talent and rolls at the snap: critical success and he beats the tackle, critical failure and he jumps offsides (but will the ref see and flag it?). My press corner can just barely keep up with the speedy wideout in the slot. My opponent's running multiple plays out of the I formation, my MLB has to read them pre-snap and can give instructions to the DBs. Spider 2 Y Banana. The whole bit. I want this, but baseball with league play and the entire off-season simulated. Basically, I want the game from Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 21:21
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:In JRPGs, you're playing the whole party. Individual characters usually don't have many options; some are designed to repeat one command as often as possible. One idea I had to make a good compromise would be that each player controls a group of such simple characters, so a bit of FFT in the mix as well
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 22:03
|
|
|
Squad based tactical JRPG sounds like Bahamut Lagoon. You control units on a grid to move and engage other units but each unit is a squad composed of four individuals with the usual spread of classes. Or sometimes a unit is a dragon.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 22:21
|
|
|
I had a JRPG-inspired boardgame half-prototype that I've been trying to mull over how to convert to a tabletop RPG for a while, with each player controlling three characters. The problem with that is that if you want any kind of tactical combat, you're devoting a massive chunk of playtime to each battle, basically giving every player three turns or having to rotate which character they control each turn, which can really drag things out. The other issue for my design specifically is that it's based on a loooong list of classes making up a branching class promotion tree, which are all, of course, supposed to feel unique-ish. The best way to accomplish that as far as I can tell, especially with the simplified characters you'd want if each player is controlling three, is to have an absolutely massive list of abilities broken into different pools that different classes get access to. That's about where I checked out to work on other projects. Another possibility is for each player to use a larger pool of very simple, same-y characters that accrue a collection of small traits or modifiers over time to give them character, perhaps each contributing one or two dice to certain kinds of rolls as their main function. And they would be, of course, quite expendable, leading to much weeping and gnashing of teeth when your longest-lasting character with the cool scar, the bionic arm, the peg leg, and the fear of giant beetles falls in combat. I'm thinking sort of like the injuries and traits characters get in Gorkamorka/Mordheim/Necromunda-type skirmish games.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 23:12
|
|
|
I've got my system down on the PC side to allow for each player to control 3-5 units with little additional time cost. But it's a total unworkable nightmare on the GM side and I don't really see any path forward, so I'm tabling the idea of squads for now. Another question for y'all: is there a subgenre/word for "fantasy in the ruins of sci-fi" that we see in Wolfe/Destiny/Numenera/Endless Legend? Wikipedia tells me Doing Earth but that feels bleaker than what I'm picturing. Is it just post-post-apoc? CitizenKeen fucked around with this message at 23:24 on May 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2021 23:20
|
|
|
Does anyone have any experience with these "solo RPG" supplements? This one company made a bunch of "Solo but for X" PDFs for all manner of RPGs. I haven't bought any b/c I'm not sure how many of them are truly good adaptions to their specific systems beyond just reprinting the same general advice and Oracle sub-system.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 09:25
|
|
|
Hey folks, if you were looking to spend some money on RPGs over the next few days maybe hold off until tomorrow: https://twitter.com/itchio/status/1392563376513945601 I mean, the standard payout on itch is 90% anyway so I don't think it's a big deal if you buy at other times, but you know -- if you want to support indie creators that tiny bit more tomorrow's a good day to purchase. (Specifically it's a good day to purchase my games in particular, self-promo, self-promo, etc.)
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 09:55
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:probably not but it's my go-to theme for things that don't have one License Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 10:30
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:Another question for y'all: is there a subgenre/word for "fantasy in the ruins of sci-fi" that we see in Wolfe/Destiny/Numenera/Endless Legend? Wikipedia tells me Doing Earth but that feels bleaker than what I'm picturing. Is it just post-post-apoc? No, you had it right the first time, Dying Earth is the term. It sounds bleak, and you could definitely do bleak with the concept if you wanted to, but I don't think anyone familiar with the genre would automatically read "bleak" into it, because most examples... aren't. Like, the original Dying Earth's tone is somewhere around "japes", and even with the more serious examples I don't think the people in them are typically preoccupied by the "dying" of the world? Their societies are ongoing concerns, the old world is this distant past, any potential final end is still a very theoretical concern. The bleakest example I can think of is Endless Legend, because Auriga's slow death is the main focus of the game.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 13:17
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I would like an actually good game with humans alongside dinosaurs. I've read a bunch and every one fails for various crazy reasons. I don't even care much what the theme is, could be JP, could be Dinotopia, could be a mix, as long as the mechanics are good and there's no confederate apologia.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 14:36
|
|
|
I've never cottoned onto dinosaur games because I don't want to CitizenKeen posted:Another question for y'all: is there a subgenre/word for "fantasy in the ruins of sci-fi" that we see in Wolfe/Destiny/Numenera/Endless Legend? Wikipedia tells me Doing Earth but that feels bleaker than what I'm picturing. Is it just post-post-apoc? JMBosch posted:I had a JRPG-inspired boardgame half-prototype that I've been trying to mull over how to convert to a tabletop RPG for a while, with each player controlling three characters. The problem with that is that if you want any kind of tactical combat, you're devoting a massive chunk of playtime to each battle, basically giving every player three turns or having to rotate which character they control each turn, which can really drag things out. I could see running a game where each player controls a party of 3-4 characters who each have 2-3 useful commands. I'd probably use a minute timer so nobody's turn lasts more than 5 minutes. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:07 on May 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 14:46
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Does anyone have any experience with these "solo RPG" supplements? This one company made a bunch of "Solo but for X" PDFs for all manner of RPGs. I haven't bought any b/c I'm not sure how many of them are truly good adaptions to their specific systems beyond just reprinting the same general advice and Oracle sub-system. If there's a specific one you're interested in, I think most of them have the full content in the "full preview" file, just with an annoying watermark.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 14:56
|
|
|
KOGAHAZAN!! posted:No, you had it right the first time, Dying Earth is the term. The Night Land is probably pretty high on the bleakness chart, but then that one is kinda a weird one no matter how you look at it(which makes sense since it's basically the prototype for the genre)
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 19:24
|
|
|
Tulip posted:OK terrible idea here but hear me out - Thank you, yes. I imagine Campaign for Campaign for North Africa would actually be considerably less complicated or detailed to play, than Campaign for North Africa itself, which infamously involves logistical details such as: Italian units need more water than normal because their rations include dry pasta, which has to be boiled, and players must account for this on their spreadsheets. This of course makes me reconsider Fantasy Fantasy Football, in which a fantasy-football game (like blood bowl) takes place in the setting and the players assemble their fantasy teams of various units on different teams for points across a season, which could potentially take place as a meta-game at a game store where blood bowl leagues take place. (Note that this is distinct from Blood Bowl Manager - the players aren't simulating the management of actual blood bowl teams, they're simulating the management of fantasy... uh, that is, cross-team, virtual, drafted and traded individual players to create on-paper teams that score points based on the performance of the actual individual players on the real fantasy-themed sports tabletop game team...) Because now we can have Campaign for Fantasy Fantasy Football, in which the players play player-characters who are in-game fans - that is, orks, dwarves, etc. - playing fantasy bloodbowl at their local fantasy tavern or whatever, and the players' goals are to have their player-characters win, or sabotage the game, or get the other PCs to agree to play Gwent or something instead, or discover the location of the magical Ring of Spreadsheets and obtain its incredible power.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 19:49
|
|
|
KOGAHAZAN!! posted:It sounds bleak, and you could definitely do bleak with the concept if you wanted to, but I don't think anyone familiar with the genre would automatically read "bleak" into it, because most examples... aren't. Like, the original Dying Earth's tone is somewhere around "japes", and even with the more serious examples I don't think the people in them are typically preoccupied by the "dying" of the world? Their societies are ongoing concerns, the old world is this distant past, any potential final end is still a very theoretical concern. The overwhelming preoccupation, though, is with the sheer exhaustion of civilization. No one in the Dying Earth believes in the concept of progress, because why reinvent the wheel when you can scavenge a wheel? Even the most hidebound conservatives tend to be low-key con artists looking for a mark. This leads to a lot of picaresque scenarios where Cugel thinks he's fleecing some grey-faced village elder, but they're setting him up. In that regard it's a perfect setting for hex and dungeon crawling.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 20:01
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:The overwhelming preoccupation, though, is with the sheer exhaustion of civilization. No one in the Dying Earth believes in the concept of progress, because why reinvent the wheel when you can scavenge a wheel? Even the most hidebound conservatives tend to be low-key con artists looking for a mark. This leads to a lot of picaresque scenarios where Cugel thinks he's fleecing some grey-faced village elder, but they're setting him up. In that regard it's a perfect setting for hex and dungeon crawling. I'd also point out that Robin Laws' THE DYING EARTH RPG nails this perfectly and is highly recommended to anyone with even a sliver of interest.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 20:42
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I would like an actually good game with humans alongside dinosaurs. I've read a bunch and every one fails for various crazy reasons. I don't even care much what the theme is, could be JP, could be Dinotopia, could be a mix, as long as the mechanics are good and there's no confederate apologia. As long as you've got that nailed down, it's a better start than they usually get. Make it a time-machine-guided ecology-designing project like a more specific Microscope; a deanthropomorphized multi-species community-building effort like a village-less The Quiet Year meets the Land Before Time; make it a crunchy squad-based tactics game around playing a rogue group of cloned Albertosaurus running loose in downtown Toronto and evading recapture while finding food; make it about trying to find the safest, fastest way off Isla Sorna circa 1994 with nothing but a broken radio and four stranded retail employees. Just so long as it's actually about the dinosaurs, rather than them being part of the background bestiary in place of deer, bears, and elephants.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 22:06
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:This of course makes me reconsider Fantasy Fantasy Football, in which a fantasy-football game (like blood bowl) takes place in the setting and the players assemble their fantasy teams of various units on different teams for points across a season, which could potentially take place as a meta-game at a game store where blood bowl leagues take place. Don’t forget Virtu, the role-playing game of playing the perfect role-playing game.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 22:16
|
|
|
potatocubed posted:Hey folks, if you were looking to spend some money on RPGs over the next few days maybe hold off until tomorrow: How could you post the link to the announcement and not post a link to your itch.io page? Shameful.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 22:18
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Would it not make sense to treat the Hero/Superhero as a single unit moving with their soldiers? Or at most give each player control of two units so the martial characters can direct their own flanking support. Maybe only two characters per player can be viable, but I'd need to work out some mechanics to make that important and impactful. I'm also liking the idea of a large collection of characters with very minor stats and abilities kind of acting as one conglomerate character, but that would make exploring or adventuring in smaller areas like dungeons problematic. And they'd probably need a "leader" type character to be the face in social situations.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 22:37
|
|
|
My mental image was something like either the front row/back row of Ogre Battle/FFT, or the loosely defined Engagements of Double Cross or Zones in Fate. I personally wouldn't want to run it in actual Chainmail on a battlemap with precisely measured distances.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 22:45
|
|
|
Yeah, that's mostly what I meant with the broad "positioning and ranges" bit, maybe just a tad more complex. I'm not interested in grid maps or actual minis-on-a-table combat. Just trying to find a nice balance of reasons to include multiple characters, as well as believable options that become available and limitations that come into play with multiple characters without suffering from too much overhead or bookkeeping. I like hand-waving away a lot and leaving a good bit up to GM fiat, but the devil is in what details you actually nail down as specific and important. And there should be some.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 02:38
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:Honestly, what strikes me as the most crucial thing in making this work is ensuring that you're making a dinosaur game rather than a game that has dinosaurs in it - you need the dinosaurs to be (1) present by default, (2) integral to the game, and (3) exceptional within the setting and mechanics. Otherwise you end up with Broncosaurus Rex where clearly the whole thing was just taping together a bunch of generic D&D 'big animal' statblocks in between the countless pages of neoconfederate propaganda that was the author's REAL fancy (rare exceptions aside, like malevolent psychic tyrannosaurs being literal tyrant lizard kings), or one of five hundred different pulp fiction settings where there's some dinosaurs in a hollow earth or on mars or whatever but they're just there as background props from the whacky wowie zany land of SCIENCE ADVENTURE!!!!!! or god knows what. Why not just have a stone age hunter gatherer society living in a world with dinosaurs? Have some background myths that make it clear to the player, but not the characters, that their ancestors were abducted by aliens and brought to this world and leave it a that. No interactions with aliens, space explorers from Earth, etc. Just stone age folk dealing with dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts on this zoo planet.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 03:05
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:I'm told some of the earlier were a bit generic, but he improved quite a bit in his endless quest to do a customised solo supplement for every RPG. Well now, that's quite helpful! And one for DCC of all things just released. I'm now feeling more confident in checking out this stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 05:36
|
|
|
Charlz Guybon posted:Why not just have a stone age hunter gatherer society living in a world with dinosaurs? Have some background myths that make it clear to the player, but not the characters, that their ancestors were abducted by aliens and brought to this world and leave it a that. No interactions with aliens, space explorers from Earth, etc. Just stone age folk dealing with dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts on this zoo planet.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 05:55
|
|
|
An idea to synergise two thread conversation topics at once: Dying Earth genre dinosaur game, set in the Last Days of the Cretaceous If you want to add some relevent scifi weirdness, have two competing factions of time travellers, future humans and David Icke esque Reptilians from mutually exclusive futures, in a struggle to determine whether reptiles or mammals come out on top of the coming mass extinction
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 06:32
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:An idea to synergise two thread conversation topics at once: Dying Earth genre dinosaur game, set in the Last Days of the Cretaceous
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 07:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 10:33 |
|
|
Drakyn posted:Honestly, what strikes me as the most crucial thing in making this work is ensuring that you're making a dinosaur game rather than a game that has dinosaurs in it - you need the dinosaurs to be (1) present by default, (2) integral to the game, and (3) exceptional within the setting and mechanics. actually spells as monsters would also own in a classic fantasy game. You don't just "get" spells at level up, you have to go out of your way to find, subdue and record a wild one. Forget the tarrasque, every few decades Wish breaks loose.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 07:31
|
|