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potatocubed posted:It does: they bump your grade of success up or down one, and sometimes have other effects. It did, but only for attack rolls and saving throws, not skill checks, which is exactly what splicer was talking about. That alternate rule was also only for attack rolls and saving throws.
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Jul 17, 2021 01:34
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One thing I like about rolling multiple dice is that you can have more mechanics that trigger on sixes or whatever, like Fragged Empire's Strong Hits. Critical hits on a d20 are too much mechanical weight on a thing that happens 5% of the time. By far the weirdest compromise I've seen is JAGS 4d6-4 to produce a d20 with a bell curve. BattleMaster posted:FATE too - the 4dF rolls follow a nice bell curve even if the fact that the average roll is 0 may be less exciting for people who like rolling and seeing the numbers come up.
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Jul 17, 2021 03:23
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I liked saying 20s and 1s explode up and down.
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Jul 17, 2021 05:06
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theironjef posted:Sentinels of the Multiverse. How does Sentinels feel as a supers game overall? I would like a slightly weightier supers game that doesn't disappear into its own rear end like Mutants and Masterminds does. FMguru posted:Dying Earth RPG from Pelgrane. KingKalamari posted:Fria Ligen's licensed Alien RPG does an amazing job of mechanically translating the tension and overall atmosphere of the franchise into RPG format. What makes these work so well for their settings? Mr. Maltose posted:The Leverage RPG is another good example. Lemon-Lime posted:The One Ring. I do have these, and I agree they feel really good for what they set out to do. Heck, Leverage feels like it'd be a great fit for any heist-type game or setting. mllaneza posted:West End's Star Wars d6 game worked out really well. Every session I've been in, on either side of the GM screen felt Star Wars-y and Star Wars type stuff could easily happen. It's super fast in play too, even with novice gamers - you just roll the number of dice indicated on your character sheet and try and roll high. That's interesting, given how all the subsequent Star Wars games try the same thing and end up tripping over something along the way.
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Jul 17, 2021 05:12
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quote:Fria Ligen's licensed Alien RPG does an amazing job of mechanically translating the tension and overall atmosphere of the franchise into RPG format. Yeah, for what it's worth, to hit the vibe they're trying to hit, very tense encounters where instead of creeping insanity it's stress making everyone do things, it works very well. Stress being used to juice skill rolls but cranking up the tension for everyone as it pushes them toward going nuts is great for the fiction. The idea is basically you can add stress dice to skill rolls(and you end up having to), and one of the results in the special stress dice makes a character go crazy.
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Jul 17, 2021 13:38
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Nuns with Guns posted:How does Sentinels feel as a supers game overall? I would like a slightly weightier supers game that doesn't disappear into its own rear end like Mutants and Masterminds does. I'll be honest, I don't really know what weighty means in this context. Sentinels reduces powers to their category, name, and die value, so for example if you were making Cyclops he'd just have Enery Projection: Laser D10. No tricks or mechanics or anything baked in at that level. Powers and skills both work like that, and create the first two columns from which you'll pull one die each to make dice pools. The third and last column is a measure of how hosed up the situation is as how you deal with hosed up situations, and it can be powered by either your health track dropping or the environment in the battle you're in getting more chaotic. Since powers are just die values, you can reskin them to just whatever, as long as they still make sense in their category, which might make things feel less narratively impactful? Not for me, but I know some people hate easy reskins. The powers do get more complex when you factor in the rest of character creation (basic mechanic is just assemble a pool of one power, one skill, and your status die, roll the pool and take the middle result only), by adding options that mess with that statement. A simple power might just be "Attack using [Energy Power] and use your Max die instead of Mid" or "Roll Hinder using [Travel Power] and apply the effect to every nearby enemy]", or "When you suffer damage from [Energy Type], instead gain a boost using the rolled damage value to your next attack". Enemies are one my favorite parts just because the majority of them will literally be a die on a card. You'll see a D6 Mook and he'll be a D6. When he attacks you pick up that die (probably with some other mooks at the same time) roll them, and deal damage to people with the results. It's viscerally satisfying because you can knock them off the card when they lose, and tougher mooks don't just die, when you beat them down, they drop a die size. Overall, I do recommend just checking out the character creation, for my money it's the best semi-random character creator in the business right now.
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Jul 17, 2021 16:11
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Nuns with Guns posted:How does Sentinels feel as a supers game overall? I would like a slightly weightier supers game that doesn't disappear into its own rear end like Mutants and Masterminds does. I'm not a huge fan of Sentinels, but I think it's the best supers game on the market right now. It does supers combat amazingly well, for a specific definition of superhero, with zero guidance to the GM on making fun and balanced encounters. Outside combat, the game completely falls apart because supers never do anything but fight. I have some personal "dice feel" problems with the game, but it's good tech and a good game.
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Jul 17, 2021 16:24
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CitizenKeen posted:It does supers combat amazingly well, for a specific definition of superhero, with zero guidance to the GM on making fun and balanced encounters. Outside combat, the game completely falls apart because supers never do anything but fight. I felt the book had detailed and good advice on how to make balanced encounters? Like, it says 'use this many things of this level, this is the sort of thing a threat of this level should do, swap them around like this'. You're spot on about the outside combat thing though. There's even less there than Lancer.
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Jul 17, 2021 17:42
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Recent discussion on RPG.net that might help: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/sentinel-comics-or-prowlers-paragons.878236/
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Jul 17, 2021 17:51
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Nuns with Guns posted:What makes these work so well for their settings? For Alien: The Stress mechanic where players accumulate stress dice, which are rolled alongside their regular dice for skill rolls and allow the chance for extra chances at success but also also open up the increasing possibility of causing the players to fly into a Panic when a 1 is rolled on them, very accurately captures the feeling of rising tension and anxiety within the films themselves. The game also uses asymmetrical mechanics for human and xenomorph NPCs, which makes the xenomorphs feel like a much more powerful and alien presence. It also includes a very well designed "stealth phase", where the players are exploring an area while potentially being stalked by hostiles (Who are controlled by the GM and have their own, separate mechanics for this phase of play), which really captures the paranoia from the scenes in the first movie where the crew is trying to find the xenomorph.
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Jul 17, 2021 18:21
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Is there a trad games Discord channel? I didn't see anything in the stickied threads.
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Jul 18, 2021 03:35
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DrSunshine posted:Is there a trad games Discord channel? I didn't see anything in the stickied threads. https://discord.gg/k8tRkasz4A
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Jul 18, 2021 03:37
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DrSunshine posted:Is there a trad games Discord channel? I didn't see anything in the stickied threads. do you want one for rpgs or board games
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Jul 18, 2021 04:17
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theironjef posted:I'll be honest, I don't really know what weighty means in this context. I guess I meant something that had some mechanical representation of unique powers that's not abstracted out to like, PBTA-levels. Sentinels sounds interesting though. The enemy design sounds pretty nice. KingKalamari posted:For Alien: The Stress mechanic where players accumulate stress dice, which are rolled alongside their regular dice for skill rolls and allow the chance for extra chances at success but also also open up the increasing possibility of causing the players to fly into a Panic when a 1 is rolled on them, very accurately captures the feeling of rising tension and anxiety within the films themselves. The game also uses asymmetrical mechanics for human and xenomorph NPCs, which makes the xenomorphs feel like a much more powerful and alien presence. It also includes a very well designed "stealth phase", where the players are exploring an area while potentially being stalked by hostiles (Who are controlled by the GM and have their own, separate mechanics for this phase of play), which really captures the paranoia from the scenes in the first movie where the crew is trying to find the xenomorph. That's an interesting point about how the separation between PC and NPC mechanics can play into a player's "feeling" about an enemy. And it make sense that alien creatures don't operate under terms we understand and can't easily copy.
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Jul 18, 2021 05:15
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Nuns with Guns posted:I guess I meant something that had some mechanical representation of unique powers that's not abstracted out to like, PBTA-levels. Sentinels sounds interesting though. The enemy design sounds pretty nice. Ah, well yeah that's not really the specific forte of Sentinels, it abstracts the powers to a single die. But the abilities that utilize the powers are pretty mechanically interesting, they just tend to work (though not always) by category of power instead of specific power.
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Jul 18, 2021 05:16
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Countblanc posted:do you want one for rpgs or board games RPGs, please. Thank you!!
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Jul 18, 2021 05:42
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theironjef posted:Ah, well yeah that's not really the specific forte of Sentinels, it abstracts the powers to a single die. But the abilities that utilize the powers are pretty mechanically interesting, they just tend to work (though not always) by category of power instead of specific power. One thing that sort of put Sentinels in perspective for me was somebody saying it was really more of a comic book simulator than a superhero simulator. Which was very clever and feels spot on.
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Jul 18, 2021 13:58
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IME superhero comics are about investigating mysteries ,exploring fantastic places, saving people from natural and man-made disasters, and fighting. Superhero RPGs are about fighting.
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Jul 18, 2021 15:03
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Halloween Jack posted:IME superhero comics are about investigating mysteries ,exploring fantastic places, saving people from natural and man-made disasters, and fighting. Superhero RPGs are about fighting. Sadly, most of the time you don't even have to tag "superhero" onto RPGs to still be accurate. It's a violent medium.
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Jul 18, 2021 15:19
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Halloween Jack posted:IME superhero comics are about investigating mysteries ,exploring fantastic places, saving people from natural and man-made disasters, and fighting. Superhero RPGs are about fighting. What superhero comics are you reading that include the first two because during the dark time of my life where I was reading Big 2 it was either shmaltzy drama or fighting against other superheroes for terribly contrived reasons (aka Events).
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Jul 18, 2021 15:51
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One of the bigger lines in comics is literally called detective comics
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Jul 18, 2021 15:55
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Plutonis posted:What superhero comics are you reading that include the first two because during the dark time of my life where I was reading Big 2 it was either shmaltzy drama or fighting against other superheroes for terribly contrived reasons (aka Events). It does depend on which comics you're looking at or getting lucky about Marvel/DC humoring a smaller title you'd be interested in, but those do happen. They're not the big event titles about supeheroes fighting for X reason, so they don't get the same media coverage (about how they suck) or promotion.
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Jul 18, 2021 16:01
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If Watchman was a TTRPG both Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan would be GMPCs and Rorscharch would be the player who ragequits due to the GM's chicanery.Pocky In My Pocket posted:One of the bigger lines in comics is literally called detective comics That's why I specifically said the superhero genre!
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Jul 18, 2021 16:05
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When I stopped reading Big Two comics, Marvel was routinely accused of only wanting to do stories about crime and espionage, while DC was doing a lot of stuff about alternate realities. I quit because I loathed the new business model of building the entire shared universe around annual crossover events.
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Jul 18, 2021 16:07
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Plutonis posted:If Watchman was a TTRPG both Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan would be GMPCs and Rorscharch would be the player who ragequits due to the GM's chicanery. ... Batman comes from the Detective Comics line, among others.
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Jul 18, 2021 16:07
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Search and rescue seems pretty ripe for being adapted to tactical gameplay, either alongside combat as an alternate win condition or as its own system.
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Jul 18, 2021 16:15
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SkyeAuroline posted:... Batman comes from the Detective Comics line, among others. Detective Comics is still still running and it's still Batman's comic (and also a comic major enough that DC rebranded to be named after it decades ago), alongside the other flagship comic, Action Comics (which is usually reserved for Superman.) They both also usually have self-titled comics going at the same time.
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Jul 18, 2021 16:22
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SkyeAuroline posted:... Batman comes from the Detective Comics line, among others. Yeah when I think of Batman and Superman stories, it's usually about them investigating who it is they need to punch. Batman moreso than Superman but there's a reason Clark is a journalist.
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Jul 18, 2021 16:23
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Honestly I don't think Sentinels is as bad out of combat as the general consensus seems to be. It's like... slightly better than D&D is out of combat, which is awful, but it's also the industry standard. Sentinels uses a thing called the Overcome roll to deal with most problems that aren't punching, helping punch, or being punched. You assemble a pool, roll it, and compare against this chart: 0 or less: Action utterly, spectacularly fails 1-3: Action fails, or succeeds with a major twist 4-7: Action succeeds, but with a minor twist 8-11: Action completely succeeds 12+: Action succeeds beyond expectations Obviously since it's possible to roll 0 or less there's already tools in place for what hindrance penalties or assist bonuses would look like and do. Now normally in Sentinels your pool is "1 Ability (Power), 1 Quality (Skill), 1 Status Die" and that would still apply if you had a way to apply it to your attempt to do a non-combat overcome. Trying to power a device and you have lightning blasts? You can roll Electricity D10, Technology D8, and your status die. And if you absolutely can't figure out how to work in a power, that's fine, the game is aware that might come up and says to just use two qualities. "I'll try to restart the device with Technology D8, Insight D8, and my status die," for example. There are two systems that build out from that as well, first the twists mentioned in the chart. Your character will have principles that sort of work similarly to alignment from other games, but provide twist suggestions at major and minor levels. Like I've got a Squirrel Girl I built here with Principle of the Tactician, and her minor twist suggestion there is "What variable did your plan not account for?" She has another minor twist from her second Principle (of the Squirrel here, but that's really reskinned "Of Youth" which is "Who is put out by your relentless overconfidence?"), and there are further twist suggestions in the Environment, on enemies, and on listed hazards and stuff. So you're not hurting for options. The other is that there's always going to be a quality you can fall back on, since the last thing you do with your character is add a D8 quality that you make up. It's your fallback, and it helps define your character as well. In SG's case here, I gave her "Kicking Butts and Eating Nuts" which is a little colorful, but really I would just use it for anytime she does one of those "Wait, there's a species of squirrel that can burrow, so I CAN BURROW" things. Finally, there's nothing stopping you from running a non-combat scene exactly like a combat scene. Throw in an environment and a ticking clock (which doesn't actually have a scale of time attached to it, so making the environment "Every booze-soaked gin joint in this stinking town" and the scale of time "Until the Dowager Countess throws her masquerade ball next Thursday" is fine. You still have a full economy of action options between Boosting your alllies, Hindering and being Hindered by your foes, and making Overcome rolls to gather intel or modify a situation. You could even have fights that develop during the noncombat stuff that don't work like fights, similar to how Batman montages often feature roughing up thugs, but rarely bother with suggesting that Batman ever did anything difficult to get that thug to that rooftop. Just make an overcome pool that includes a Combat power like Strength or something, and montage the situation. "I roll Super Strength, Deduction, and Status, and this is the process of me hanging a thug off a roof and asking him one more time where Danton is holed up." Since environments often work by kicking out Overcome challenges, you'd just have the scene focus on those. Those are just index cards with a problem and a list of checkboxes on them. Fill out the checkboxes and the problem is solved or at least halted for now. The GM can also use the environments ticking clock mechanic to apply time limits to solve those problems. Something like "This opportunity to dig up information hits the field at the second green box on the environment tracker, as that's when Gleason, the detective on the take, gets off duty and heads to the bar. If the heroes don't get three overcome boxes checked with him by the time we hit the second yellow box, he'll realize he's in the crosshairs and skip town." Meanwhile you could have a general pool of Overcome requirements that the players could just take their time with. Stuff like hitting up the city records building or roughing up gang members in the know. Set a total number of boxes that need crossing(including general and timed) and you've got a full goal, add a few bad guys who roll Hinder dice to throw red herrings out, kill their own thugs before they can squeal, etc, and you've got a full complement of non-combat actions that make up a fine montage sequence. Anyhow I really like this game. theironjef fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 18, 2021 20:06
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As someone with no horse in this fight about Sentinels, my take-away has been, "Wow, Squirrel Girl sounds pretty good, maybe I should start reading more comics again."
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Jul 18, 2021 23:17
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Xiahou Dun posted:As someone with no horse in this fight about Sentinels, my take-away has been, "Wow, Squirrel Girl sounds pretty good, maybe I should start reading more comics again." Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is a great series.
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Jul 18, 2021 23:20
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Xiahou Dun posted:As someone with no horse in this fight about Sentinels, my take-away has been, "Wow, Squirrel Girl sounds pretty good, maybe I should start reading more comics again." Here's the character sheet I mocked up for her. There's a lot of renamed basic stuff in there, so like Squirrel Boss is just Leadership, etc. Outside of that the whole character is straight from the book, no houserules or anything. Came out pretty great.  
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Jul 18, 2021 23:37
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Maxwell Lord posted:Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is a great series. It's got good writing but it's very hit and miss when it comes to the art which is worth noting if you're going to recommend it
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Jul 18, 2021 23:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Search and rescue seems pretty ripe for being adapted to tactical gameplay, either alongside combat as an alternate win condition or as its own system.
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Jul 19, 2021 01:06
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Is it really the RPG fault as much as the capacity of the GM, though? To do a compelling mystery that requires only intellectual skill solving is something that demands much of the storyteller, and there is the risk that the players won't be able to meet that.
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Jul 19, 2021 01:16
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Yeah even besides the origins of RPGS in Wargaming, combat is just the easiest thing to flesh out for this kind of thing
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Jul 19, 2021 01:24
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drrockso20 posted:Yeah even besides the origins of RPGS in Wargaming, combat is just the easiest thing to flesh out for this kind of thing For a vast majority of people it's way easier to plan a decent and fun combat even in a crunchy RPG than plan out a full campaign, write NPCs and come up with new scenarios every week, even while using premade stuff.
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Jul 19, 2021 01:28
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If one can design a fun tactical subsystem for "hit people with weapons until they die " one can surely do the same for "escape from this collapsing building" or "stop this plane from crashing"
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Jul 19, 2021 01:40
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Halloween Jack posted:If one can design a fun tactical subsystem for "hit people with weapons until they die " one can surely do the same for "escape from this collapsing building" or "stop this plane from crashing" Its way harder though. We have so many intuitive abstractions for combat from video games and the like. The plane recovery situation is actually a great example of something that I'd be surprised to see anyone build a genuinely fun subsystem around.
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Jul 19, 2021 01:51
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Booyah- posted:Its way harder though. We have so many intuitive abstractions for combat from video games and the like. The plane recovery situation is actually a great example of something that I'd be surprised to see anyone build a genuinely fun subsystem around. It's about what's given detail. The question I find to ask is always "what's the equivalent of a 'move' action, in this subsystem?"
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Jul 19, 2021 02:53
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