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Toebone posted:A couple years back I came across a PDF of this indie RPG and now I'm drawing a blank on the name. Very low-budget feel, almost like a zine - black and white text with creepy black ink drawings. The story involved your party travelling up a flooded valley, through the broken dam and into an observatory (I think), while being trailed by assassins. Anyone know what I'm thinking of? Deep Carbon Observatory is probably what you're thinking of. Where the Observatory specifically was about peering down into alien things inside the earth and the flood had released (and wiped out) some of the ancient alien things, right?
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Sep 25, 2021 01:54
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That's it! Thanks
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Sep 25, 2021 01:56
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If you dug Deep Carbon Observatory back then, it's definitely worth another look now that it's available in a remastered edition featuring a sensible layout and maps that actually make sense
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Sep 25, 2021 02:42
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Coolness Averted posted:I'm either running it or Heart in October so might have an update on whether 13th Age is still a decent game or just had 2 or 3 really cool ideas to work into more modern stuff. I cannot fathom a universe in which running 13A is preferable to Heart. 13th Age is ultimately okay. It's more an evolution of 3.5 and Pathfinder than 4E, but it still has caster supremacy problems and a bunch of garbage ideas that reduce down to stupid dice tricks instead of tactical choices. If you gotta play a d20 fantasy dungeon crawler, play Fantasy Craft.
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Sep 25, 2021 02:51
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grassy gnoll posted:I cannot fathom a universe in which running 13A is preferable to Heart. One with much better sample adventures?
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Sep 25, 2021 03:14
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grassy gnoll posted:I cannot fathom a universe in which running 13A is preferable to Heart. I love Fantasy Craft but I can't earnestly suggest it since it's an eternally incomplete system due to not having a proper monster book* and the magic book being forever MIA(and without it magic using characters are somewhat mediocre by my understanding) *admittedly the game does have a good quality system for building monsters and NPC's and there's a good online builder for it, but that's still a lot of work to add on top of learning all of FC's quirks
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Sep 25, 2021 03:47
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grassy gnoll posted:I cannot fathom a universe in which running 13A is preferable to Heart. They also were really into the sections of the Spire game that touched on the Heart's weirdness, so I think Heart might be a better middleground, but some times players don't want games about loss and being on the edge of society and reality, they just wanna wear wizard hats or hit poo poo with axes. Based on what's on my shelf and/or what I can get my players to buy into and a few other criteria 13th Age is a decent backup for "Ok, fine you'd rather play D&D murder hobos, here's a system that won't bore me to tears or be a headache even if it's not my ideal genre."
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Sep 25, 2021 04:16
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Coolness Averted posted:On the topic of Starfinder, wasnt it also a massive step backwards? Like it was closer in framework to Pf 1e than 2nd because of parallel development. There's some clear overlap in the lead design teams for both games, with the typical higher-up creatives being in charge of both games, but they remain very different. There's no separate designers/authors list in PF2, there's just a relatively modest designers entry in the credits for a handful of people. SF has a respectable designers entry, and then an additional crowded entry for authors. SF came out in 2017, and PF2 came out in 2019. Based on how these things often go, though of course without dev blogs or whatever this is just rank speculation, Starfinder was probably wrapping up development at the time they were really in the swing of things getting PF2 going. Especially with how extensively different PF2 was, and it's their cash cow, despite the smoke-and-mirrors they like to pull by acting like a jillion emails on a subscriber list equals a jillion playtesters, they do at least appear to do a not insignificant amount of actual playtesting on their games (for a TTRPG company). Starfinder is 100% Pathfinder 1E with additional stuff stapled on for scifi, though they did try out a few significant tweaks to the core system in some places. A lot of it sucks pretty hard or is extremely lazy-seeming. There's a very kludgy thing where your character level is actually reflected as a diegetic "threat/professionalism" assessment. You basically have a license that rates your character's CR. That's used to justify item level restrictions as well as numbergoup item treadmill design, since it's a lot harder to justify why you can't just buy the better mass-produced space gun than in a fantasy setting where you can just say "uh, I guess your soul power isn't strong enough to wield a unique but only slightly better sword" (even though that wasn't much of a thing in PF itself from what I remember). They tried out some level/CR-derived scaling DC stuff that was pretty busted in a few places as the math of it quickly outpaced any reasonable expectation of what a PC should be facing, because it was based on simple multiplication. I recall the vehicle rules were especially bad, to the point that using them anywhere within a mile as-written meant you couldn't go faster than a sprint on foot without crashing horribly if you dared to even think of hitting your turn signal. I think they released errata pretty quickly to paper over most of the bad skill check math, but they left the complexly terrible vehicle rules alone. Hopefully they fixed them a short time later, I didn't keep up. Oh, and despite the claim to be "everything you need to run a game, be you player or GM" right at the start of the book, they made the baffling choice not to make room for any enemy stats except for a single CR20 goblin space pirate warlord. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Sep 25, 2021 |
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Sep 25, 2021 05:34
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grassy gnoll posted:I cannot fathom a universe in which running 13A is preferable to Heart. neonchameleon posted:Yes, rolling basic attacks is a failure. It takes up time without making a meaningful choice other than to keep the combat going and you're all going to make a lot of them in every session. All you do is decide who to attack - and then roll (multiple stages) to find out what happened. The amount either of roleplaying or tactical depth added to the game for the sheer time spent rolling basic attacks to whittle away at an enemy health pool is negligible; all you are doing is filling time. I've been both playing Lancer (in pickup sessions in the Interpoint discord) and GMing it (for a regular group) and I can say that rolling basic attacks in Lancer is not boring! There's a couple of reasons for this: 1. Lancer weapons are reasonably varied and often have rider effects so choice of weapon is important. The extremely boring GMS Assault Rifle has Reliable 2 making it fantastic for desperate shots as well as hard to hit enemies and grunts. 2. When you attack you need to commit to either a quick action Skirmish (attack with one weapon) or full action Barrage (two weapons, or a superheavy weapon). Barraging naturally means more damage but may leave you poorly positioned or with nothing to hit (though you are allowed to target different enemies with your attacks). Without overcharging, Skirmish, moving and then Skirmishing again is not a valid move. 3. Cover being important means that getting to the enemy and setting them up for a hit is more involved. The ideal gameplay loop of Lancer is that both sides are XCOMing around to try and get into flanking cover. 4. Two to three weapon attacks takes out an average NPC; and will also knock a structure off a player. Every attack is now a point of high tension - will I take out this enemy? Am I going to get structured and have to check for one of my systems being blown off? 5. Overcharging adds risk/reward. For the cost of some heat, you can take another quick action, even one you've already made this turn. The enemy has 3 HP left - is it worth taking the heat to make another attempt at taking it out before it can move? I'll be in range of being tech-attacked and overheating - is that worth it? It creates a kind of tension-and-release: you jockey into position, weighing up all the potential costs and benefits, and then with your 'basic attack' you release that intention as you see the fruits of your labours.
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Sep 25, 2021 05:38
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Coolness Averted posted:Spire is 100% my jam, and Heart was a good iteration and improvement of its rules. Most of the folks I'll be running this for were in my Spire game and it was clear they really wanted to able to kill stuff and get loot or more tangible rewards for doing stuff vs advancing an agenda or playing as freedom fighters in a morally grey world. My usual group of players is all about the hit things with axes/wear wizard hats/wear power armor/do physical stuff/roll dice as much as possible/get loot (to be honest, most of the time, I am too). PbtA, FATE, and any other games of that style are pretty much non-starters, and getting them to play anything that's not d20 based is a difficult sell (except for Shadowrun 3e weirdly).
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Sep 25, 2021 05:45
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I feel like 13th Age has a role as a lightweight F20 game, despite some of its flaws in class design; Spire and Heart are excellent, but they are very specifically tied to their setting. Fantasy Craft has its own flaws that aren't as well-known, and it's an overall heavier game, even if it was ahead of its time in many ways. Starfinder strikes me as a mess because it seemed rushed, the devs didn't have the resources they needed, or both. There are rumors it was undercut by management who didn't want to see Pathfinder threatened, but I don't have anything firm on that.
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Sep 25, 2021 07:28
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Johnny Landmine posted:If you dug Deep Carbon Observatory back then, it's definitely worth another look now that it's available in a remastered edition featuring a sensible layout and maps that actually make sense Similarly, anyone who enjoyed the vibe of Deep Carbon Observatory should check out Veins of the Earth by the same author. It's definitely a case of the author having passions he needed to exorcise, and DCO got him partway there, while Veins was the apotheosis. It's not an adventure, and it's system-neutral, but it very much hits the same notes of deep time and the fantasy underworld being intensely weird, wondrous, and inimical to sane and comprehensible life.
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Sep 25, 2021 09:10
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Kestral posted:Similarly, anyone who enjoyed the vibe of Deep Carbon Observatory should check out Veins of the Earth by the same author. It's definitely a case of the author having passions he needed to exorcise, and DCO got him partway there, while Veins was the apotheosis. It's not an adventure, and it's system-neutral, but it very much hits the same notes of deep time and the fantasy underworld being intensely weird, wondrous, and inimical to sane and comprehensible life. Raggi noted in a recent LotFP update that he's losing the rights to Veins of the Earth in a few months, so I suspect a remastered version can't be far off. Veins is actually written for LotFP, Patrick Stuart's made that pretty clear over the years.
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Sep 25, 2021 09:27
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Kestral posted:Similarly, anyone who enjoyed the vibe of Deep Carbon Observatory should check out Veins of the Earth by the same author. It's definitely a case of the author having passions he needed to exorcise, and DCO got him partway there, while Veins was the apotheosis. It's not an adventure, and it's system-neutral, but it very much hits the same notes of deep time and the fantasy underworld being intensely weird, wondrous, and inimical to sane and comprehensible life. It's predecessor Fire On The Velvet Horizon is also worth taking a look into Also in the conversation regarding sci-fi RPG's, the author of Whitehack did one a while ago called Suldokar's Wake that is probably pretty good considering how good Whitehack is
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Sep 25, 2021 09:29
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A lot of Veins seems like it would be miserable to actually play (often intentionally so), but it is definitely a fascinating and inspiring piece of work. It has a bestiary loaded with some of the most legitimately terrifying RPG monsters I've ever seen, any one of which could be the big, climactic, world-ending threat in any normal campaign.
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Sep 25, 2021 09:57
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I do like the latest edition of Travller for sci-fi stuff if you're okay with a character that might not be exactly what you want(and will be at least middle-aged).
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Sep 25, 2021 10:48
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Panzeh posted:I do like the latest edition of Travller for sci-fi stuff if you're okay with a character that might not be exactly what you want(and will be at least middle-aged). Ay. Recently ran a game of it for a group and I have to say: Clunky, yes, but for what it does, it's perfectly serviceable. And I've seen much worse scifi games (looking at you, Starfinder).
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Sep 25, 2021 14:43
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Coolness Averted posted:As a quick clarification, having things like rolling to hit or ability scores isn't viewed as inherently a flawed by too many people outside of our subculture here. Like it's valid to not like that style or games with a pass fail binary, but it's not the truism conversations here make it seem like. Nobody thinks rolling to hit is universally bad. In D&D 3.x+ etc. it's arguably bad because this would be a giant essay that I'm not doing here but it involves using the words binary success and combat progression a lot. And again a lot of games just throw it in because that's how it's done without ever questioning the assumption. Nobody thinks basic attacks are universally bad. In D&D 3.x+ etc. look you get where I'm going here. And literal bookworths of words have been posted on these forums about all of these so you're going to get shorthand instead of typing up the full essay on "the futility of trying to balance multiple infinite use effects in a combat centric hp go down game when one of them is moredamage" yet again.
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Sep 25, 2021 15:38
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Splicer posted:Nobody thinks rolling to hit is universally bad. speak for yourself buster 
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Sep 25, 2021 15:44
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Serious question: replace ability scores with what? Just skills?
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Sep 25, 2021 16:33
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Halloween Jack posted:Serious question: replace ability scores with what? Just skills? Other systems or versions of D&D vary. And in some systems ability scores are good! STA uses them very effectively, but it's a classless point buy system built around ability scores/skills/focuses/drives dealies. Splicer fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Sep 25, 2021 |
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Sep 25, 2021 16:56
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Halloween Jack posted:Serious question: replace ability scores with what? Just skills? You can! Fate does just fine with that, for example. Or you can replace them with approaches (Fate again, or 5e L5R), or motivations (Smallville, Cavaliers of Mars) or just plain nothing! Generally though, when people say "death to ability scores" in the context of 3+e D&D, they mean some combination of "get rid of the vestigial 3-18 ability score that serves almost no purpose except to derive the modifier that actually matters" and "don't make something critical to the functionality of a class tied to something external to the class." As an example, if a fighter needs a +4 Strength bonus to hit to be effective within the system's math, and additionally has various special abilities that key off of, say, Dex and Wisdom, instead of making it so that a player who puts less than an 18 in Strength and less than, say, 15 and 13 in either Dex or Wis, you can just say "Fighters get a +4 bonus to attack and damage; additionally, they allocate a +3 and a +1 between (ability set A) and (ability set B)." Then you can either ditch ability scores altogether, or use them in other ways such that your character's natural proclivities are a matter of roleplaying and characterization rather than all fighters needing to be pretty identical to function. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Sep 25, 2021 |
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Sep 25, 2021 17:00
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Halloween Jack posted:Serious question: replace ability scores with what? Just skills? there are two interesting/positive uses for ability scores imo, neither of which are well-matched to ability scores as a mechanic one is a way to narratively describe your character relative to other characters -- what are they like, what are they good at, and so on -- in a manner that specifically reflects what qualities are important to the game. ability scores are bad at this both because they represent a sort of universalized attempt to classify all important human characteristics (far too general, and therefore practically meaningless) and also because there are some really dumb or even offensive assumptions about how those characteristics work (e.g. generalized intelligence) i honestly don't care what you replace this part with in a D&D-like game. if you held a gun to my head and told me to choose i'd probably suggest a loosely interpreted background / career system that doesn't intersect with combat mechanics at all the other is that ability scores represent mechanical trade-offs, branching paths in character customization where you have to choose between exclusive options. making this choice by distributing points rather than e.g. a series of binary alternatives allows for greater flexibility, with many, many options being fungible with any other option of similar cost, but this also both inherently creates a greater risk of trap options, and especially when binary choices ("do i put a 13 in this tertiary stat so i can take this helpful feat?") and scaling choices ("how high do i raise this secondary stat so that my riders are more effective?") are carelessly thrown into the same bucket for this part, if i were making a D&D clone, i would discard ability scores entirely and simply have characters be defined by selecting one power from a bucket at each level, along with maybe some kind of subclass-defining passive or rider effect that attaches to each of those powers. so you'd have fewer choices in character creation, but the depth : complexity ratio favors simplicity here imo and chargen is a lovely place to put depth anyways since you only do it once Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 25, 2021 |
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Sep 25, 2021 17:43
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:
I don't know if that split is inherently bad, in the sense of having [Broad Character Defining Thing] + [Narrower Character Defining Thing] can't ever be good. It's just that in anything I can think of off-hand, it's either a functionally useless level of granularity or out and out offensive (e.g. your example of generalized intelligence). You could totally have some game set up so it's cool and functional to have two characters X and Y, where X has a high [unspecified physical stat] so they have a certain amount of domain-general ability as a jack of all trades, while Y instead has a high [specific physical stat] so they are really good at one specific thing but only that thing : the problem is that such a game would have to make these two options different but equally interesting and useful. Most games have a clear and obvious better option because they've divided up the fictional spread such that one specific thing dominates (like Dex being a god stat vs. lots of fiddly little narrow skills) or it's a meaningless distinction where the final numbers wind up being the same (which is just an elaborate way of getting a package deal but with the possibility of loving up and falling into a trap). Like, from a conceptual standpoint, the WoD-style system of making dice-pools out of mixing and matching attributes and abilities is really very cool : the general idea of shooting something with a gun being [Dex] + [Firearms], while knowing stuff about guns being [Int] + [Firearms], that's flexible and intuitive. It's just that the divisions are bad and lopsided so there are "correct" answers (maxing Strength and Firearms together is silly) or just bizarre and possibly offensive groupings.
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Sep 25, 2021 18:14
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Halloween Jack posted:Serious question: replace ability scores with what? Just skills? The original Star Wars game from West End did pretty much that, and it worked decently well with handfuls of d6s. So much so, that they pivoted to basing most of their licensing deals to use that same system.
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Sep 25, 2021 18:29
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Arivia posted:Raggi noted in a recent LotFP update that he's losing the rights to Veins of the Earth in a few months, so I suspect a remastered version can't be far off. Remastered Veins would be an instant purchase for me. It's ostensibly written for LotFP, yeah, but the vast majority of the text is either system-agnostic, or doing that OSR thing that Stars Without Number is good at, where the material with stats is readily converted. The value of Veins is mostly in the ideas, and to a lesser extent in the random tables and the underworld creation mechanics.
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Sep 25, 2021 18:32
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The original Star Wars game from West End did pretty much that, and it worked decently well with handfuls of d6s. So much so, that they pivoted to basing most of their licensing deals to use that same system. Isn't that just something, that PDQ does?
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Sep 25, 2021 19:37
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Has there been any word on anything new for Sentinel Comics? I know we were supposed to get at the least a book for the Dark Watch and maybe Guise?
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Sep 26, 2021 00:23
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Information about the Guise book has been trickling out in the KS updates. There's mostly just been a few art pieces and fluff like that though.
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Sep 26, 2021 00:27
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so I think the real core thing underneath it all is: when you're making a system, the stats, whether you call them skills or attributes or abilities or triggers, should tie in very obvious ways to how characters would distinguish themselves from each other. It should be very apparent at a glance to players why they'd care about a character's "Strength" or "hosed up" or "Demon Seduction Proficiency," and importantly why they'd care that A has +3 to one of those while B has -2. If it's not apparent and not that relevant to the stories the game is meant to be about, then gently caress it, toss it out. Perhaps my favorite RPG does this quite well - in Firebrands, the question is "what are your attractive qualities?" Everyone has 3 but there's obviously a big difference between "idealistic" and "sophisticated" and "severe." The game doesn't really care about characters being better at fighting or whatever, it is about the space where rivals and enemies find value in each other's company, so it has the stats that matter and then everybody's equal at the stuff that isn't really intended to be contested.
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Sep 26, 2021 00:41
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So I think we've narrowed the games that my group of total tabletop newcomers want's to play down to Delta Green,Night's Black Agents, or Trail of Cthulhu. The setting of Delta Green seems cool but looks a little complex in terms of rules compared to the other two, the GUMSHOE rules seem pretty straightforward. The vibe we're going for I think is "mainly mystery with some horror, the threat is extremely dangerous, your safety is not guaranteed, but if you're smart and tough you can prevail". Probably closer to the bleak side of things than the pulpy one, but short of full bleak. So given that, and the fact that we've never played any of these games before, wondered if any of you guys had recommendations for which of those three seems like the best fit for having a good game with that kind of general vibe. Fill Baptismal fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Sep 26, 2021 |
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Sep 26, 2021 03:23
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Night's Black Agents is a game of superspies vs vampires. The PCs are basically a squad of James Bond and Jason Boune tier badasses who are at movie logic levels of ability in their areas of strength. They can and should run circles around any sort of normal person. This gives NBA PCs tons of agency in how they choose to operate, and they should only really feel the pressure when they're up against major intelligence agencies or superhuman vampires. The main game loop usually revolves around probing a vampire conspiracy for weaknesses, striking at them, and then running like hell from the fallout. It's good fun.
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Sep 26, 2021 04:07
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Halloween Jack posted:Serious question: replace ability scores with what? Just skills? Splicer posted:Specifically in the case of D&D 5E? Skills and class choices. In 5e you pick a race a class a background and an archetype, that's a huge range of interactions to determine your to-hit, damage, saves, AC, initiative, and very good/good/OK/bad skills. Ability scores actually interfere with this. I've picked a warlock with the academic background and chosen arcana as a proficient skill, why do I also need to put points into intelligence to get my +5 to Know Demon Stuff? I've already picked Know Demon Stuff three times! Just skills works great for Strike! But when you make a system that has more built-in flavor like D&D, you add to this. Your class can give you abilities and powers that are flavorful and well-suited to your class, and interact with the core Skills system in a variety of ways. Same with something like what D&D calls race. If you still want more, throw in some other minor choices that serve to focus one or two aspects of your character, like background or whatever.
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Sep 26, 2021 04:34
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Is there any way to get honest feedback on games without hitting the Abilene Paradox?
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Sep 26, 2021 04:38
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hyphz posted:Is there any way to get honest feedback on games without hitting the Abilene Paradox? Get people who pride themselves on 'brutal honesty'.
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Sep 26, 2021 04:51
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Blinding, controlled questions, normalized data, not hanging out with jerks, controlling for observer effects, a sufficiently large sample size. So like basic social science protocols.
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Sep 26, 2021 04:55
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Fill Baptismal posted:So I think we've narrowed the games that my group of total tabletop newcomers want's to play down to Delta Green,Night's Black Agents, or Trail of Cthulhu. The setting of Delta Green seems cool but looks a little complex in terms of rules compared to the other two, the GUMSHOE rules seem pretty straightforward.
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Sep 26, 2021 04:58
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Hostile V posted:If you want to do Gumshoe with mystery and horror and danger, Fear Itself 2e is Gumshoe's agnostic horror system that covers a full spectrum of different horror types and isn't inherently tied to the Cthulhu mythos and their idea of downward spiral sanity loss. It's legit pretty focused on you getting through it if you're careful enough. I know that's not picking one of those three choices but like if they're leaning Gumshoe I really recommend something that isn't just inherently Cthulhu-leaning. Also, even if you do want to do Cthulhu mythos and downward spirals, Trail of Cthulhu is still one of the first Gumshoe games. I haven't read enough Fear Itself 2e to know for certain, but I have to assume there's been enough refinement of the system that it will work better unless you specifically want to run a Trail of Cthulhu adventure. (There's a lot of interesting Trail of Cthulhu adventures, to be fair, but that's probably a bigger investment than I'm willing to recommend.)
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Sep 26, 2021 05:38
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Thanks for the recommendations. One of the mean reason that we picked those three is that they all seem to have a decent library of pre-written stuff, which seemed like a good idea until I at least (I’ll be the one running it) got a little more of an idea of what I was doing and felt confident enough to branch out on my own. Are there good fear itself pre-mades you could recommend?
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Sep 26, 2021 06:18
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hey way back in the day there was a D&D playcast that had a guy who played like a sentient robot guy called Noonin and he punched a wizard in the balls to death they were a group of people who just liked to have fun this is a poo poo description but the only other thing i can say it was like 2009-2010 and was hosted on one of those poofed away old podcast sites
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Sep 26, 2021 06:33
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