|
Warthur posted:I particularly love it when designers say "This game doesn't use magic, it uses (synonym for magic)." Yeah, I recall seeing this all over the place as an actual selling point for games in the 90's. Nine times out of ten it was just a bog-standard spell point system but completely different because it was called Dweomer-Craft, PsyForce or Majycke instead of just "magic".
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 09:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 06:16 |
|
|
TheDiceMustRoll posted:thats invisible sun, along with him 'inventing' dealing with absentee players by saying 'um. he was somewhere else this week'. The Scarred Lands Creature Collection for 5th Edition D&D has a monster known as a Dream Shadow that can kidnap people and suck them up into a dream-realm where they remain in stasis but also gain the benefits of a long rest. They can release said creature whenever they want, although forcing them to do so requires divine intervention or death, and they've been known to snatch up people at highly coincidental times. Like before a major battle or in the middle of a tense negotiation. They've even been known to follow around groups of adventurers, who sometimes consider it a mark of status to be so chosen. This was a metagaming way of explaining what happens to PCs who miss a game session, and it's more original than this. And it also has stats.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 09:07
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:thinking about it, you kinda have to have an apocalypse if you want to have a setting with both an established civilization, but also is old enough to have things to "reclaim" and "explore" I tried to do both of these simultaneously for the D&D With Homeschooled Kids game I've been running for some years now: a relatively recent (~100 years back) short, sharp, but geographically constrained "apocalypse" that broke the back of the setting equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire by turning a chunk of it into an extremely haunted forest, and a "slow apocalypse" that has been spreading the cursed wood across the land ever since, pushing waves of refugees ahead of it and causing the social order to slowly fall to pieces. You'd have a landscape full of riches and ruins rendered inaccessible by the curse, except to foolhardy adventurers, some of it just outside of living memory, others you could still go and ask the village elders about. The intention was to have the campaign's gameplay loop be: 1. Explore the haunted forest, looking for clues to the nature of the Embraced, seven big bads who are each a folklore archetype and a classic D&D monster (the lich, the ghost, the werewolf, etc.), which happened to mostly be located in adventure sites / minor dungeons 2. Figure out who these people were before the curse made them into monsters, so you can uncover the secret weaknesses that make them vulnerable to mortals 3. Find and enter their lair as a serious dungeon crawl to destroy the eldritch heart of their power which resurrects them if they die, forcing them to confront the party 4. Have a climactic encounter where the secret nature vulnerability of the villain (the self-loathing banshee's aversion to mirrors, the werewolf's fanatical loyalty) is exploited to weaken them and allow them to be destroyed once and for all 5. The remaining villains get stronger, but the curse's spread is diminished and diverted - repeat six more times. What actually happened was that they immediately murdered a bunch of paladins of the God of Righteous Feudalism who were coming to ask what their intentions were for the ruined fortress they were restoring, got that fortress besieged by the regent's army, allied with one of the Embraced to fight their mutual enemies, and spent the next three years systematically betraying and destroying every single faction and significant NPC they encountered. They've done... Three? Dungeons in 4.5 years and seem quite content with that. It is Peak Player Character Bullshit and I love it, but one day I need to run the same campaign concept with adults and see how that loop actually works.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 09:19
|
|
|
Warthur posted:I particularly love it when designers say "This game doesn't use magic, it uses (synonym for magic)." My favorite's always been Talislanta, which for literally decades has been advertising itself with "No Elves!". It does have an elder race of elegant, graceful mystics who are in touch with magic and the spiritual world, and live in a mysterious sylvan valley - but they're not called elves, so it's different!
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 09:49
|
|
|
Oh, I remember that -- an early adopter of marketing your game by making GBS threads on D&D. (Which is a shame, because Talislanta had loads of cool poo poo in it as I recall.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 11:16
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:The Scarred Lands Creature Collection for 5th Edition D&D has a monster known as a Dream Shadow that can kidnap people and suck them up into a dream-realm where they remain in stasis but also gain the benefits of a long rest. They can release said creature whenever they want, although forcing them to do so requires divine intervention or death, and they've been known to snatch up people at highly coincidental times. Like before a major battle or in the middle of a tense negotiation. They've even been known to follow around groups of adventurers, who sometimes consider it a mark of status to be so chosen. I think you fall into a shadow realm and have to do a one-on-one with your DM or w/e but I remember it being a big hyped up feature that wasnt anything good. Monte cook taught me that people lie
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 13:00
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:The Scarred Lands Creature Collection for 5th Edition D&D has a monster known as a Dream Shadow that can kidnap people and suck them up into a dream-realm where they remain in stasis but also gain the benefits of a long rest. They can release said creature whenever they want, although forcing them to do so requires divine intervention or death, and they've been known to snatch up people at highly coincidental times. Like before a major battle or in the middle of a tense negotiation. They've even been known to follow around groups of adventurers, who sometimes consider it a mark of status to be so chosen. I just have every setting have a disease called Adventurer's Flu, which spreads primarily among communities whose lifestyle involves travelling far and wide across the world, not getting enough sleep and coming into contact with all sorts of unsanitary monsters. It comes on fast, goes away just as quickly, and leaves the subject capable of following the rest of the party but too hazy to contribute or remember very clearly what's going on.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 15:21
|
|
|
idk if it got mentioned here but apparently Daniel Fox got the Trove taken down, lol edit: VVV welp alg fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jul 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 15:27
|
|
|
alg posted:idk if it got mentioned here but apparently Daniel Fox got the Trove taken down, lol We definitely mentioned here how Daniel Fox is claiming credit for poo poo he didn't do, lol.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 15:33
|
|
|
Toshimo posted:We definitely mentioned here how Daniel Fox is claiming credit for poo poo he didn't do, lol. neongrey posted:impressive how nobody in the history of ever before these guys had thought of a fantasy post apocalypse Plus of course all the bigger names.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 15:42
|
|
|
I feel like there's room in the industry for an abandonware Trove just to keep stuff like WEG Ghostbusters available but then nerds can't help but get lovely.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 15:44
|
|
|
There's definitely room in the industry to preserve out-of-print books, but The Trove specifically isn't that despite their claims to be otherwise and effectively serves as a piracy site for a bunch of TTRPGs on top of all the PDFs that are so old that they aren't any skin off anyone's nose
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 15:48
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:thinking about it, you kinda have to have an apocalypse if you want to have a setting with both an established civilization, but also is old enough to have things to "reclaim" and "explore" Taken to the extreme, this can be banal in itself. Like, I've been playing Rage 2 and now Mad Max, and there's no sense that anybody is eating anything but canned food that they scavenged. (Apparently I can build something called a maggot farm?) Even really cheap Pastapocalypse movies often focused on protecting a community that's trying to grow its own food. A problem with many post-apocalyptic RPGs is that they refuse to make choices. They either focus very very narrowly on imitating The Road Warrior, or they have to be a kitchen sink of every post-apoc franchise they've ever heard of--which always starts with swallowing the premise of Gamma World whole hog. This has produced some extremely silly games that don't know they're silly, which have rules for starvation and radiation syndrome and rayguns and talking plants.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 16:56
|
|
|
moths posted:I feel like there's room in the industry for an abandonware Trove just to keep stuff like WEG Ghostbusters available but then nerds can't help but get lovely. gradenko_2000 posted:There's definitely room in the industry to preserve out-of-print books, but The Trove specifically isn't that despite their claims to be otherwise and effectively serves as a piracy site for a bunch of TTRPGs on top of all the PDFs that are so old that they aren't any skin off anyone's nose
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:00
|
|
|
Literally the original meaning of in for a penny in for a pound.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:05
|
|
|
I don't except the trove (or some alternate version of it) to be gone particularly long tbh
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:13
|
|
|
Andrast posted:I don't except the trove (or some alternate version of it) to be gone particularly long tbh "Some alternate version of it" never went down, the Trove was always just the centralized mirror for /tg/'s decentralized share threads, and somehow no lawyer has ever followed the breadcrumbs and followed up with hosts. Most of what's there is still accessible now, it's just a pain in the rear end to find anything - which is probably why takedowns are uncommon, really. Not worth the effort vs the minimal number of people actually accessing it. Trove managed to get its PDFs Google indexed for the fourth or fifth result for some major RPGs just searching their names, so its days were numbered regardless. We'll see how long it takes to come back.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:21
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I've thought about this a lot, and I think that to really be a post-apocalyptic setting there has to be the constant sense that you're living in the aftermath of something. Practically every box-standard fantasy campaign setting features some wizard empire that fell thousands of years ago, but you're not literally living in its ruins. Like, in the Dying Earth, there's no housing shortage because there are plenty of empty stone manses just sitting around. In Sign of the Labrys, people are losing their social instincts because both plague and an abundance of preserved food discourages cooperation. Everyone looks to the past, even for basic sustenance. I felt that the way Mutant Year Zero does it, worked well from a mechanical standpoint, if you ignore the backstory and how the players basically advance down a tech tree in about 20 gaming sessions.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:24
|
|
|
SkyeAuroline posted:somehow no lawyer has ever followed the breadcrumbs and followed up with hosts.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:26
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Aren't most of these sites in countries that don't conform to American copyright law? Like the one that had the Uzbek domain. Rem.uz did get around it that way, yeah. Not sure how successful they've been overall. Volafile is the recent host that's been shifted to for thread content, and it's temporary storage only, which is their workaround; 48 hours for intentionally obscured files isn't enough to find it and file any complaint most of the time. Other than that there's still a heavy reliance on mega even though they do comply with complaints/takedowns now (the GURPS mega actually got banned from sharing files, and got around it by distributing the account details directly so that the "personal access only" was still open - I'm baffled nobody deleted the whole thing within hours). So it's a more fragile thing than what the Trove did, but it is playing whack-a-mole with people way more dedicated to not spending money on their games than just convenience or uncertainty accounts for. They'll always find some way through copyright no matter how jank the results end up. I'm not sure if it actually is a game in and of itself to them, how many are "freedom of information crusaders" or whatever they're using for terminology, how many people want clout, whatever drives them. The users are easier - "it's free poo poo". But I guess that's just dealing with piracy in general. I, for one, buy the games I'm playing and don't touch anything else. I don't have the time for anything else anyway. Getting my money's worth and then some even on the misses. e: clarifying that last paragraph is not, in fact, a piracy endorsement with a reword SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jul 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 17:40
|
|
|
If the trove is not some complex storefront, it's just a website hosting files. If it were coming back soon, it would be back already. There's something else going on
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:11
|
|
|
alg posted:If the trove is not some complex storefront, it's just a website hosting files. If it were coming back soon, it would be back already. There's something else going on
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:24
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:That's what everyone said the previous two times this happened. then they must be not great at this 
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:28
|
|
|
Dig up, goon.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:32
|
|
|
alg posted:then they must be not great at this
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:35
|
|
|
alg posted:If the trove is not some complex storefront, it's just a website hosting files. If it were coming back soon, it would be back already. There's something else going on
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:39
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:This is the normal life cycle of a file sharing site. Site gets taken down, squares claim victory, site goes back up in a few days. Sometimes it escalates to real world legal consequences for the pirates, but even those aren't always enough to keep them down. People have chased the Pirate Bay around the internet for the last two decades, and it always comes back. Right. It's not just some random internal problem shutting these sites down  Terrible Opinions posted:storefront? What on earth would give you that idea? Nothing would give me that idea
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:41
|
|
|
Warthur posted:I particularly love it when designers say "This game doesn't use magic, it uses (synonym for magic)." It's something a twelve year old would feel proud of coming up with
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:52
|
|
|
SkyeAuroline posted:Tribe 8 weeping in a corner somewhere, completely forgotten. Not even the first post-apocalypse fantasy setting, but at least a very compelling implementation of it unlike a lot of others, and it's what, 25 years old now? Good stuff. Earthdawn, friggin DnDs Dark Sun!
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 18:55
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:Earthdawn, friggin DnDs Dark Sun!
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 19:06
|
|
|
To play devil's advocate "Rome am fallen" and dying earth are very different scenarios.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 19:09
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:A site that only preserved out of print books would still be treated as pirates by rightsholders, and would need to adopt the same tradecraft measures as pirates to avoid being taken down. The Ghostbusters RPG is a perfect example of why. It may be a long forgotten RPG by a defunct author, but the Ghostbusters IP is owned by a powerful and litigious multinational corporation. Do they care enough, though? Abandonia.com is at least 15 years old at this point and it’ll let you download the 1986 Ghostbusters computer game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 19:26
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:The Ghostbusters RPG is a perfect example of why. It may be a long forgotten RPG by a defunct author, but the Ghostbusters IP is owned by a powerful and litigious multinational corporation. Taking down hosts of old tabletop RPGs always seemed pretty low priority, unless a company was actually pushing out a new RPG using that IP. Like yeah, there's legally no distinction between hosting the Ghostbusters RPG and Pathfinder 2e books, but we know functionally that hosting things from companies with in-print games are what will draw the biggest targets on your back. Is it even clear who has tabletop RPG publishing rights for the Ghostbusters IP right now?
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 19:38
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Do they care enough, though? I assume they believe playing that game is punishment enough.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 19:39
|
|
|
Sudden powerful sense memory of the Sinclair Spectrum +2 trying to spit out synthesized speech. "GRRRF-BRRF-TRRRF!"
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 19:50
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:Earthdawn, friggin DnDs Dark Sun!
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 20:02
|
|
|
The first part apocalyptic science fantasy game to market was Tekumel in 1975. It's gonna be a reach to top one year after D&D. And it was TSR so Ward would have known about it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 20:44
|
|
|
~To be fair~ the post said "fantasy/apocalyptic" so, like, currently undergoing an apocalypse and not post-apocalypse. Which, if I may be so bold, is still fukken wrong as hell.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 20:56
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:Earthdawn, friggin DnDs Dark Sun! Oh yeah, wasn't trying to go for the absolute first, just genuinely good settings completely forgotten. I never played Earthdawn to be familiar, Dark Sun is a good one too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 21:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 06:16 |
|
|
mellonbread posted:The Ghostbusters RPG is a perfect example of why. It may be a long forgotten RPG by a defunct author, but the Ghostbusters IP is owned by a powerful and litigious multinational corporation. There's a website dedicated to hosting all of WEG's D6 Star Wars rules. The only two books they don't have are the 1E Rulebook and Sourcebook that Fantasy Flight is currently reprinting as a collector's set. So I think if you can get away with hosting PDFs of out-of-print Star Wars books, you can probably get away with hosting Ghostbusters books.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2021 21:28
|
|
