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Dawgstar posted:If I wanted to buy the best available edition of Paranoia, that would be Service Pack 1?
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Oct 11, 2021 19:29
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Hostile V posted:Yes, it's fiction. Of course, I didn't say it was real. But it is interesting that fictional RPG "horror" stories, which claim to represent bad RPG sessions, often not only do not address the causes of actual bad RPG sessions but are actually incredibly good with regard to those causes.
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Oct 11, 2021 21:41
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dwarf74 posted:I'd personally say something like that yeah. It had a whole bunch of classic adventures converted for it, too. I agree. Note that you’ll want a printer even if you buy and read it in PDF - PARANOIA SP1 was big on giving your players fun props and handouts to mess around with.
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Oct 11, 2021 21:42
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hyphz posted:Of course, I didn't say it was real. But it is interesting that fictional RPG "horror" stories, which claim to represent bad RPG sessions, often not only do not address the causes of actual bad RPG sessions but are actually incredibly good with regard to those causes. Because it's fiction. KoDT strips are going for a specific punchline every time, and the creator isn't going to include things that mess with that throughput.
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Oct 11, 2021 23:24
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Dawgstar posted:If I wanted to buy the best available edition of Paranoia, that would be Service Pack 1? Get the second edition core if you want a nice, direct presentation of the "classic" playstyle. (The 2nd edition supplement line eventually fell off a cliff.) Get the first edition if you are curious about how the game was originally presented, before everyone was wise to the joke. Get the latest edition if you want a janky mess where the core set doesn't properly introduce the setting to you, because the crucial setting information ended up getting spun out into a separate supplement (but it's evident from the designers' comments that they expected that that stuff would be in the core box). Get the "fifth edition" (if it's even available) if you want to see just how cheap and lovely West End Games would get in their latter phases.
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Oct 11, 2021 23:37
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Second Edition has substantially more rules weight than XP. It's a relatively traditional RPG, so if you're expecting a somewhat light ruleset, I'd steer clear. (XP isn't perfect, mind you - the injury poo poo is just plain weird - but it's still a pretty light game overall.)
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Oct 11, 2021 23:47
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dwarf74 posted:Second Edition has substantially more rules weight than XP. It's a relatively traditional RPG, so if you're expecting a somewhat light ruleset, I'd steer clear. My recollection of 2nd edition is that it's reasonably light - certainly not that much heavier than XP, and perhaps even lighter if the XP injury rules bug you. First edition is substantially crunchier than both, and kind of pointlessly so given the premise, and it's pretty evident that for the 2nd edition system they course-corrected for that.
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Oct 12, 2021 00:04
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dwarf74 posted:Second Edition has substantially more rules weight than XP. It's a relatively traditional RPG, so if you're expecting a somewhat light ruleset, I'd steer clear. Like everything else in XP, the injury table's progression and use is a) what the GM thinks is funny b) what the table thinks is funny and c) what the GM thinks is funny again.
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Oct 12, 2021 00:08
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Warthur posted:My recollection of 2nd edition is that it's reasonably light - certainly not that much heavier than XP, and perhaps even lighter if the XP injury rules bug you. 2nd edition is the kind of game that has a chart for looking up the injury resulting from a given colour laser against a given colour vest. It's certainly appropriate for the kind of game it's parodying, but a lot of people consider that kind of table kind of a weird element of 80s game design that isn't strictly necessary to play Paranoia. (I counter that all good parodies are also examples of the thing they're parodying, so Paranoia in the 80s should necessarily aspire to the kind of charts-and-tables complexity of early 80s RPGs or the parody wouldn't really work.)
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Oct 12, 2021 00:17
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LatwPIAT posted:2nd edition is the kind of game that has a chart for looking up the injury resulting from a given colour laser against a given colour vest. It's certainly appropriate for the kind of game it's parodying, but a lot of people consider that kind of table kind of a weird element of 80s game design that isn't strictly necessary to play Paranoia. It has a damage system which works along the lines of "take your damage number from the weapon, adjust for armour, then roll on the relevant column to see the sort of damage that results", but it doesn't go down to that level of granularity. And we were comparing to the XP/SP1 damage system, which isn't actually that much less involved, except it doesn't have a handy chart to summarise things in a visually nice way. As a hobby we need to get over our trauma about charts. They were certainly abused in the 1980s, but it's absurd to leave a game design tool on the shelf purely on that basis, especially if it would be a more elegant and quickly-understood way of presenting the information than going into contortions to do a system which avoids the use of charts but requires you to constantly parse a fiddly notation or remember a tricksy procedure which the chart could have handled for you (which is exactly what XP did, to its detriment).
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Oct 12, 2021 00:33
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The SP1 weapon result has a chart - it's a line on top of the weapon chart on page 73. The GM screen compiles the three damage tracks (so people, bots, and treason damage) into a single chart so it's easy to compare them, but the weapon system really isn't hard overall: roll, if you hit get the base damage, then add the margin boost up to the max. It's slightly more complicated than D&D in so far as it's division not just addition, but it's really not hard.
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Oct 12, 2021 00:42
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Warthur posted:...no it doesn't. Ah, you're right. I could have sworn there was a table of modified damage values based on reflec colour vs. laser but checking my beaten copy of the game it's just a binary "do you get your armour value or not" thing. Warthur posted:As a hobby we need to get over our trauma about charts. They were certainly abused in the 1980s, but it's absurd to leave a game design tool on the shelf purely on that basis, especially if it would be a more elegant and quickly-understood way of presenting the information than going into contortions to do a system which avoids the use of charts but requires you to constantly parse a fiddly notation or remember a tricksy procedure which the chart could have handled for you (which is exactly what XP did, to its detriment). Charts are amazing and people should use them more. 
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Oct 12, 2021 00:59
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Charts are for babies. I loved Shadowrun second edition’s skill tree.
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Oct 12, 2021 05:42
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Bring back Rolemaster but a bit less.
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Oct 12, 2021 08:01
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Favorite use of charts is still the old DC Heroes RPG. Two big tables, one for what number you have to roll, another for what a success gets you. Every "column shift" you get on the action table- i.e., rolling over the next column of difficulty- gets you one on the results table. The way the numbers work in terms of what they represent is tricky but mostly holds together.
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Oct 12, 2021 08:57
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Bring back Rolemaster but a bit less. Sounds like you are describing Against the Dark Master.
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Oct 12, 2021 11:37
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thefakenews posted:Sounds like you are describing Against the Dark Master. People keep trying and it'll catch on one of these days.
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Oct 12, 2021 11:55
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Is there any rpg that doesn't irreversibly snowball into total chaos? I'm burning out on that in D&D. it is not a fault of d&d that this happens. a particular manifestation is that chaos appears as seemingly pointless violence, but the real underlying issue is players feeling analysis paralysis compounded with risk aversion. some players wake up and choose chaos(admittedly i do this) but whenever i had players do something like this it was because earlier down the line they talked their way out of reasonable options out a fear of the consequences. the way i prevent this is threefold. first, if the players ever seem like they are spinning their wheels i interject with anything happening. even just an arbitrary random event like "a person walks by carrying X" is enough. second, i set an expectation that you can not achieve perfect results and things will be messy. third, whenever a player veers into this territory i call it out. "you want to blow up the dinner party? what about the servants? would (character) really do that?"
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Oct 12, 2021 12:56
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Is the trad games discord still a thing? was trying to find a link to it, but couldn't.
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Oct 12, 2021 13:25
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pog boyfriend posted:it is not a fault of d&d that this happens. a particular manifestation is that chaos appears as seemingly pointless violence, but the real underlying issue is players feeling analysis paralysis compounded with risk aversion. some players wake up and choose chaos(admittedly i do this) but whenever i had players do something like this it was because earlier down the line they talked their way out of reasonable options out a fear of the consequences. Emptyquoting this, unfortunately it happened on old oWoD and even Ars Magica games of mine.
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Oct 12, 2021 15:02
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Lmfao hell yeah https://twitter.com/cyross4vocaloid/status/611528527779753985?t=rVcXwmmzQzJdA3ldqdZZhA&s=19
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Oct 12, 2021 16:42
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Plutonis posted:Lmfao hell yeah Oh, Japan 
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Oct 12, 2021 16:47
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pog boyfriend posted:it is not a fault of d&d that this happens. a particular manifestation is that chaos appears as seemingly pointless violence, but the real underlying issue is players feeling analysis paralysis compounded with risk aversion. some players wake up and choose chaos(admittedly i do this) but whenever i had players do something like this it was because earlier down the line they talked their way out of reasonable options out a fear of the consequences. Yeah, this is absolutely what's happening. I find it weird that folks are saying narrative games/engines don't run the risk too. I've had pbta, forged in the dark, and Spire devolve into slapstick violence. Sometimes everyone just rolls with it. Other times the GM or other players pause and say "Ok, seriously? Does that make sense?"
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Oct 12, 2021 16:52
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Warthur posted:As a hobby we need to get over our trauma about charts. They were certainly abused in the 1980s, but it's absurd to leave a game design tool on the shelf purely on that basis, especially if it would be a more elegant and quickly-understood way of presenting the information than going into contortions to do a system which avoids the use of charts but requires you to constantly parse a fiddly notation or remember a tricksy procedure which the chart could have handled for you (which is exactly what XP did, to its detriment). Tables weren't abused in the 70s and 80s so much as they were just the state of design. I started gaming with mostly White Wolf and Shadowrun, so I'm still bemused that it took so long for designers to figure out that you don't need a table for your core die mechanic, just a simple formula. (I did get some Masterbook games soon after.) IME using tables for resolution makes sense when you want a result that isn't yes/no or X-Y=Z. Masterbook, as a game system, is pointlessly obtuse in a hundred ways, but this is not a bad example: 
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Oct 12, 2021 16:56
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Plutonis posted:Lmfao hell yeah Miyazaki took inspiration from old Fighting Fantasy books when making Dark Souls. Fun fact!
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Oct 12, 2021 17:00
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Did they change the book content too?
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Oct 12, 2021 17:08
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Halloween Jack posted:Serious question: are most "charts" in RPGs actually charts? It seems that almost all of them are actually just tables. You're correct on that. It's mostly tables, because charts are good at representing overall patterns in information for a surface-level understanding and, say, quickly telling which bar graph is higher and which are very small compare to the other bars, but bad for reading out precise information. That said, RPGs should use more tables and charts, because visual representations of information can greatly help understanding.
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Oct 12, 2021 17:37
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Technically a countdown clock is a pie chart. I need to think about this some more.
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Oct 12, 2021 19:29
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LatwPIAT posted:You're correct on that. It's mostly tables, because charts are good at representing overall patterns in information for a surface-level understanding and, say, quickly telling which bar graph is higher and which are very small compare to the other bars, but bad for reading out precise information. Which of course means that Leading Edge Games and Iron Crown Enterprises are the most educational publishers ever!
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Oct 12, 2021 19:40
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hyphz posted:Did they change the book content too? I hope not because changing the creatures into monster girls but keeping the original text would rule
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Oct 12, 2021 19:44
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It’s weird too that all the translations of the original titles have been changed into transliterations.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:07
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That's pretty common for titles of English content translated in to Japanese, I believe.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:12
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I'm very out of touch in America let alone Japan but the people cooler than me say that straight up using English words in Japanese sentences is especially trendy the last few years. It's been fashionable for decades but people tell me it's on an upswing. Even stuff that was made for Japanese audiences first often use English- in-katakana titles, like Evangelion (shinseki ebangerion) and Cowboy Beebop (kauboi beeboppu) [sorry both of those from memory].
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Oct 12, 2021 21:15
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That explains why Alice in Borderland had the word 'GAME' in English surrounded by Japanese characters all the time. I was very confused by that. TIL!
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Oct 12, 2021 21:44
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Tulip posted:Even stuff that was made for Japanese audiences first often use English- in-katakana titles, like Evangelion (shinseki ebangerion) and Cowboy Beebop (kauboi beeboppu) [sorry both of those from memory]. buncha red white & weeablues
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Oct 12, 2021 21:51
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Yankeeaboo
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Oct 12, 2021 23:54
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Tulip posted:I'm very out of touch in America let alone Japan but the people cooler than me say that straight up using English words in Japanese sentences is especially trendy the last few years. It's been fashionable for decades but people tell me it's on an upswing. It's actually... "torendi". No I'm not making that up.
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Oct 13, 2021 03:16
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LatwPIAT posted:You're correct on that. It's mostly tables, because charts are good at representing overall patterns in information for a surface-level understanding and, say, quickly telling which bar graph is higher and which are very small compare to the other bars, but bad for reading out precise information. Yeah, when you're trying to categorize a lot of things, tables are really good for that- as someone with a lot of familiarity with grog games, a table is a really good way to summarize the differences between, say, different kinds of units, even if the items are like "can overrun" or "can move during the exploitation phase" with a check mark or X because i like having that in visual form rather than having to dig through rules for the implication.
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Oct 13, 2021 12:49
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thefakenews posted:Sounds like you are describing Against the Dark Master. there's also Lightmaster https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/279034/Lightmaster-Core-Rulebook
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Oct 13, 2021 13:23
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So, James "Grimachu" Desborough is trying to get into a one-sided "DEBATE ME!" slap fight with me on Twitter over a vague reference I made to him a month ago? I kind of want to share the exchange, but it's through an account I use for NSFW side projects I don't know if I want to share with the world?
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Oct 13, 2021 19:25
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