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LatwPIAT posted:They did and it was called Gatecrashing. It was the… third supplement released I think?
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Jan 5, 2022 21:45
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I forgot about pain threshold stacking with the trait. It's more useful than it appears at first glance, since Eclipse Phase's wound system incentivizes hitting hard early on to put people out of action with stacked penalties. Like how SOM appears to be the most useless attribute since it just governs melee and a couple other forgettable skills, but is actually vital for combat characters because SOM saves are what determines whether you get stunned by big damage. I always allowed players to take the stackable "exsurgent only" trait that increased the damage of the psychic stab ability. It was still useless because you could just negate it with a saving throw, but at least it was fun.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:54
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:For Alita I think I'd want primarily a rules-light / narrative-first style game for the vast majority of the story and even regular combat, but then Motorball, specifically, is a carefully siloed tactical minigame.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:57
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Splicer posted:Then release Eclipse Phase: Gatecrashers which contains a lot of well-polished rules for gatecrashing lol, they did Except for the "well-polished anything" part. So like, the good part of that book was discussing how to make your own exoworlds, pretty much, and what to consider about them. Every other exoworld presented was, well... Either it was "you can't hang out here, it has one plot hook, and said plot hook will mostly be set on another world entirely." or it was "this planet is literally inaccessible in all reasonable ways, especially the one where we canonically blew up the Pandora Gate because it was too much fun" or it was the third one which was "this is a spooky world where spooky undefined things happens to psychic characters, we define nothing about it." And then in the back were about fifty pod morphs that were interesting but incredibly bad to actually use. mellonbread posted:Nah. Ambience Sense, sure, but the rest... The thing is that the point where speed and extra actions are most vital are in combat. "Shoot a dude" is not a mental action. So like... yeah, sure, you can calculate two prime numbers at once. Or maybe hack two things at once, but getting into Eclipse Phase and hacking is... Either everything is, as per canon, wi-fi, and hacking people and making their brains explode/delete their egos ala EP 2.0 is the most OP thing or the people of the setting aren't immense fuckwits and you need wired connections to do anything like that, and you will thus never really be in a situation where you'd be free to hack more than one thing at once. LatwPIAT posted:Emotion Control doesn’t really work like that: it just gives a bonus against emotional manipulation (the stuff about resisting unwanted emotion is flavorful, but not really a mechanical effect). Multitasking also doesn’t let you spend twice as much time doing something, because it’s gives you a separate action and EP doesn’t really have rules for two people, let alone two thought processes, cooperating like that. At least it did’t until they added a rule to let you convert extra actions to doing things faster in the Player’s Guide. (That said rolling two separate hacking actions against the same target is almost always better than rolling one with a small skill boost.) However, consider also: And this is where I come in with the "mother may I"-stuff. Because theoretically you can bully your GM into giving you bonuse on everything, but you could also theoretically have a GM that denies you the bonus on everything but a very narrow range of uses. Mind, considering the way EP points and chargen go, you probably already have the max allowed rating in any skill you particularly care about at chargen, especially if the GM is playing "as intended" and you're getting free garbage morphs for each mission rather than having a reason to spend any chargen points on skill and a blinged-out starter morph. EP has a pretty hard ceiling on how good your skills can actually be, and even if you could push them higher than said ceiling, no real reward for it.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:13
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Yeah, I think that vague specificity is really at the heart of a lot of EP's problems, at least from a setting design perspective: They will frequently lavish a lot of detail onto the parts of the setting that aren't necessarily all that important to your average game but interest individual writers (Gear porn, the Titanean Commonwealth) but get all mysterious and vague about stuff that's actually really important for the type of game they're trying to present (What the hell were the TITANs doing during The Fall? How is a Firewall op supposed to look? etc.). I think part of it comes from a misplaced attempt to promote GMs customizing the game to make it their own: There's actually a section in the "Secrets that Matter" section of the original book that discusses The ETI and basically upfront admits "We deliberately left what these things are and what their motivations are ambiguous so you can customize it for your own game" and then provides some potential suggestions for ETI origin stories that provide a jumping off point for GMs to work from, which I actually really appreciate. and there's a similar section in the X-Risks book that goes into what OZMA is all about, presented as in-universe correspondence between a bunch of Firewall agents comparing notes about what little information they have on OZMA and spit-balling theories that leaves the organization deliberately vague but gives GMs a bunch of potential theories about what they're all about to use in their own games. I think that kind of vagueness is a better approach since it at least presents GMs with some potential ideas to use as their own or use as a starting point to develop a customized origin that's in-line with the themes of the game.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:37
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PurpleXVI posted:And this is where I come in with the "mother may I"-stuff. Because theoretically you can bully your GM into giving you bonuse on everything, but you could also theoretically have a GM that denies you the bonus on everything but a very narrow range of uses. Oh, it’s terrible design and I’m mocking it when I say you should bully your GM into letting you abuse it. It’s something that’s very obvious in a lot of games, abilities that have a vaguely designed scope, leaving a vast gap between the most and least permissive interpretation—with the possible result that everything turns into an argument over possible interpretations of rules text. I really quite appreciate the work that goes into making computer game adaptions of tabletop roleplaying games, because some programmer has had to sit down and figure out exactly how something should work in a game that can have no ambiguity. Everything has to have a firmly established mechanical effect, which does a lot to make a solid game in ways RPG designers all too easily can forgo by just not telling anyone what the mechanical interactions should be like. And you can maybe get away with that if you have a couple of vaguely defined skills in a game not really about using those skills, included just in case a situation comes up… but in a lot of games this kind of wish-washy design is tied to core functionality, like your Special Cool Powers or spotting rolls. KingKalamari posted:Yeah, I think that vague specificity is really at the heart of a lot of EP's problems, at least from a setting design perspective: They will frequently lavish a lot of detail onto the parts of the setting that aren't necessarily all that important to your average game but interest individual writers (Gear porn, the Titanean Commonwealth) The history of anarchism in the 19th Century… I’m still angry they wasted pages on that in Rimward. LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 23:44
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PurpleXVI posted:"Shoot a dude" is not a mental action.
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Jan 6, 2022 01:22
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O so those rules do suck, just not from being weak.
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Jan 6, 2022 01:31
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Why do you think I keep calling them "totally broken"
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Jan 6, 2022 01:49
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Leraika posted:I've always found the kijin stuff to be the most numberfuck and least interesting part of TBZ. I strongly suggest you don't look too close at the ayakashi rules.
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Jan 6, 2022 02:44
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Anyone know a good source of printable minis for a cyberpunk game?
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Jan 6, 2022 03:06
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grassy gnoll posted:Respectfully to the original poster, literally the only thing HWI has in common with Battle Angel is that it has cybernetics. Nah. It works. I can make an android street fighter with a sword battling against the crushing weight of societal oppression and a search for identity. And wouldn't 'rub your highest modifiers against one another until you win' be in like any game? Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Jan 6, 2022 03:12
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Dawgstar posted:Nah. It works. I can make an android street fighter with a sword battling against the crushing weight of societal oppression and a search for identity. And wouldn't 'rub your highest modifiers against one another until you win' be in like any game?
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Jan 6, 2022 03:25
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grassy gnoll posted:I strongly suggest you don't look too close at the ayakashi rules. the difference between kijin numberfuck and ayakashi numberfuck is that I like the latter e: and also that ayakashi pretty much HAVE to be their own thing whilst you can just slap kijin bonuses on any other character. that doesn't mean the ayakashi rules are good, and some of them are frankly kind of obnoxious because the same rules are used for bosses and pcs, pretty much. they really needed to be asymmetric.
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Jan 6, 2022 04:08
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Parkreiner posted:I have thoughts but I think we need to unpack the question a bit first. I was specifically including the insane Last Order/Mars Chronicle stuff as part of the Eclipse Phase comparison. Gunnm takes place in a similar post-Transhuman Apocalypse setting.
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Jan 6, 2022 04:31
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Dawgstar posted:Nah. It works. I can make an android street fighter with a sword battling against the crushing weight of societal oppression and a search for identity. And wouldn't 'rub your highest modifiers against one another until you win' be in like any game? Neither of these things supports the other, though. HWI is a game about the horrors of grinding poverty. OG Gunmn uses poverty as a background element to emphasize its dystopian elements, but it's not something that impacts the plot - being poor is something that happens to tertiary characters to push them into conflict with the protagonists, sometimes. Everything after Last Order, money and capitalism are no longer relevant concepts. In the original series, Alita herself produces what was assumed to be a literally impossible amount of money just by pushing herself for a bit during the bounty hunting arc. Then she transforms into a combination rockstar/Formula 1 racer/gladiator who needs a pit crew to maintain her body and rubs elbows with the biggest star in the Scrapyard as a peer, not as a toady. Once you hit the big Zapan arc and Nova enters the game, money is not an object or even relevant to the story. The story is about lofty scifi ideals, fate, societal control, quite a lot of conspiracy theory woo and a shitload of martial arts. Eclipse Phase, TBZ, and even Fung Shui are explicitly about some or all of those things, although the degree to which each matches their intent is definitely a matter of debate. Nova's deal is torturing someone physically and mentally to see if he can unlock the secrets of fate itself, 'cause he's a lunatic. He's not going to repossess the Berserker body because Alita didn't make her last payment on time. Moreover, in a series that is explicitly about person-to-person combat to such a degree that whether the Hertza Haeon can beat Maschine Kratz style is a vital plot point with emotional significance, you need more mechanical support for the combat system than "I roll 2d6 plus five and get eleven, plus one because I spent time gigging for VectorEats" versus "I roll 2d6 plus five and get eleven too, but I get to reroll because I looked up your long dead Martian kung fu style on my phone before the fight." That's not what HWI is aiming for, and that's not a problem, because that's not what the game is trying to tell stories around. Take Motorball. Simulating a match needs to determine who is fighting who and how, who is maintaining control of the ball and how, and positioning along the track. The lazy way to do this would be to take TBZ and add a battle map and some forced move rules, so there's some strategy to moving around. The smart and difficult way to do it would be to craft your own PbtA or equivalent rolls, where you're still using simple dice rolls - potentially even the same 2d6 plus modifiers - but instead of number-go-up or number-go-down, you're staking and playing for narrative consequences: I dodge the blow but now I'm at the back of the pack; I fail to block the blow and lose one of my arms, which means I have the Unbalanced state for the rest of the match, I'll be at a disadvantage during combat, and I won't be able to fight while carrying the ball unless I know a style that emphasizes footwork; I block the blow and because I am a Kunstler fighting a larger opponent, I can choose to strip them of the ball, break one of their limbs, or make them drop back in the race, etc. HWI doesn't do any of those things, because it's a rules-light system for trying not to be so depressed you slip another rung down the ladder of economic distress and sometimes succeeding due to the power of friendship and mobile apps. D&D 3.0 shouldn't be used to run Star Wars, HWI shouldn't be used to run Battle Angel, Aces and Eights shouldn't be used to run my Smallville fanfiction game. And that's okay! None of those things are trying to be the other, except the D20 Star Wars, and we collectively learned not to do that anymore. We live in a golden age for RPG publishing where we don't have to shoehorn stuff into a system that doesn't fit the story we're trying to tell anymore. Leraika posted:the difference between kijin numberfuck and ayakashi numberfuck is that I like the latter Boy, that's the truth. If I recall correctly, forums poster Unseen Librarian picked out exactly the right ayakashi abilities to totally trivialize combat in one of the games I ran. I could either pose a challenge to their character, or not blenderize the entire rest of the party. In their defense, it was a valuable learning experience, and they did have a very cool character.
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Jan 6, 2022 05:53
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A friend of mine is trying *really* hard to start an Eclipse Phase campaign and this conversation just backs up my decision to not want to play :B
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Jan 6, 2022 12:46
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Between not caring about the new Boba Fett series on Disney+ and this convo about Eclipse Phase, I'm jonesing for a proper Star Wars campaign with the West End system.
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Jan 6, 2022 13:30
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sasha_d3ath posted:A friend of mine is trying *really* hard to start an Eclipse Phase campaign and this conversation just backs up my decision to not want to play :B FWIW, I played some EP with other goons and it went ok. The hardest part is getting into the more alien parts of the setting - I started out with a corvid uplift character, so I was pretty much playing on hard mode from the start. But the actual gameplay was fine, serviceable enough for what we were doing. This was 2e.
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Jan 6, 2022 13:41
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sasha_d3ath posted:A friend of mine is trying *really* hard to start an Eclipse Phase campaign and this conversation just backs up my decision to not want to play :B I feel like you should talk with this friend about what it is about EP that really makes them want to run an EP campaign and then find another system that does that thing better, because that should not be a great challenge.
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Jan 6, 2022 13:53
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Gort posted:Anyone know a good source of printable minis for a cyberpunk game? Turns out there are some good ones here and some not so good ones
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Jan 6, 2022 14:17
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I've been comparing Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number, because I had both and thought what the hell, and I'm kind of surprised how small the scope of WWN is compared to SWN. SWN can do so much stuff, but WWN seems very limited in comparison, at least in terms of what settings you can actually create/adapt.
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Jan 6, 2022 14:22
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hyphz posted:[...] I think it's sort of cultural symbiosis. The stereotype of cringey or sexualized/negative cringelord isn't really new but it seems like a few things perceived through a number of lenses came together to form this entire construct. Also Japan, because they somehow are always involved in something like this O_o Hiro Protagonist posted:I've been comparing Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number, because I had both and thought what the hell, and I'm kind of surprised how small the scope of WWN is compared to SWN. SWN can do so much stuff, but WWN seems very limited in comparison, at least in terms of what settings you can actually create/adapt. I think that's because of how WWN sets out to do a very specific kind of fantasy, while SWN revised one the other hand does basically all sorts of post-disaster SciFi which is a much larger margin.
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Jan 6, 2022 14:28
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I'm thinking of a Red Markets job where you're asked to investigate why a particular town reported zero Casualties for far longer than it should have been possible for it to do so, and people think that there might be some kind of weapon or treatment or solution to the virus there that's gone undiscovered since the Crash (maybe mention that there's a research lab or hospital in the town). You trek to the town and find... Casualties. It doesn't look different from any other town in the Midwest that was consumed by the Blight. What gives? The party fights its way to the local hospital, or the DHQS outpost, whatever, and they find a final situation report and... the person that was making these reports refused to classify any losses to the Blight. Were they outrun by a Vector? Cardiovascular failure. Bitten by a Casualty? Arterial perforation. Heart attack, stroke, an underlying cancer, they kept looking for "comorbidities" to write off every fatality as not actually being related to the Crash. There was no miracle cure here, just the bureaucratic echo of someone who couldn't commit to paper the horror of what was happening around them. When the character perusing the reports realizes this, roll for Self-Control.
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Jan 6, 2022 14:49
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SkyeAuroline posted:FWIW, I played some EP with other goons and it went ok. The hardest part is getting into the more alien parts of the setting - I started out with a corvid uplift character, so I was pretty much playing on hard mode from the start. But the actual gameplay was fine, serviceable enough for what we were doing. This was 2e. I've also played an EP 2e game that was okay. It didn't feel like we were fighting the system nearly as much as the goon post mortem made it seem. Remember most RPGs are really really poorly constructed and never actually analyzed critically, or expected to function without a lot of handwaving. I'd give it a shot if your friend is a good GM. I've also suffered through a lot of bad rpg systems for friends though, so might just have a higher tolerance than others when it comes to having to fight the system to get the game we want.
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Jan 6, 2022 15:26
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Mr.Misfit posted:I think it's sort of cultural symbiosis. The stereotype of cringey or sexualized/negative cringelord isn't really new but it seems like a few things perceived through a number of lenses came together to form this entire construct. Also Japan, because they somehow are always involved in something like this O_o what
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Jan 6, 2022 15:40
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sasha_d3ath posted:A friend of mine is trying *really* hard to start an Eclipse Phase campaign and this conversation just backs up my decision to not want to play :B Nah, as long as you're playing it with cool people you shouldn't have a problem. Like, I've been dunking on the system throughout the last few pages but I've also been involved in multiple Eclipse Phase campaigns over the past nine years and have had a lot of fun with them - A poorly designed system/setting does not mean a system/setting you can't have a good time in. PurpleXVI posted:I feel like you should talk with this friend about what it is about EP that really makes them want to run an EP campaign and then find another system that does that thing better, because that should not be a great challenge. I'm gonna go ahead and suggest this person not try to manipulate their friend into running a different system...
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Jan 6, 2022 16:18
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm thinking of a Red Markets job where you're asked to investigate why a particular town reported zero Casualties for far longer than it should have been possible for it to do so, and people think that there might be some kind of weapon or treatment or solution to the virus there that's gone undiscovered since the Crash (maybe mention that there's a research lab or hospital in the town). Too soon. 
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Jan 6, 2022 16:18
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KingKalamari posted:I'm gonna go ahead and suggest this person not try to manipulate their friend into running a different system...
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Jan 6, 2022 16:32
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Splicer posted:I don't think "Manipulate" is the right word here? Perhaps not the most accurate word choice, but I think it's a little presumptuous to come into a game someone else is running and try to get them to switch to a different system.
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Jan 6, 2022 16:47
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I'd complain about "that guy" who won't shut up about the virtues of another system while playing a different game, but since reading Blades in the Dark, I probably am that guy. You don't know the pain of someone who loved thief/dishonored, who's discovered an extremely good and tight system to play out those games, but is only a member of a Pathfinder group who love pathfinder because they keep finding new ways to add more plusses using splat content. Dear God
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Jan 6, 2022 16:51
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ninjoatse.cx posted:I'd complain about "that guy" who won't shut up about the virtues of another system while playing a different game, but since reading Blades in the Dark, I probably am that guy. It's never been easier to run for/play with people online. Blades has pretty decent support both on Roll20 and using Discord bots. I'm in a similar situation in that my home group is running a system I don't care for much (D&D 5E), and didn't show interest in trying anything else (although I'll give that a shot again once the current campaign concludes), so I play and run one-shots with others, too.
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Jan 6, 2022 16:56
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It's never been easier to run for/play with people online. Blades has pretty decent support both on Roll20 and using Discord bots. I'm in a similar situation in that my home group is running a system I don't care for much (D&D 5E), and didn't show interest in trying anything else (although I'll give that a shot again once the current campaign concludes), so I play and run one-shots with others, too. I really feel something is lost when not playing in person. I play with my co-workers, so attendance is really high. You can easily see when people are in for the day. When it involves going an extra step (even just logging online) it seems to fall by the wayside really quickly. Never tried a one shot. Character progressions has always seemed to be a running focus in the groups I play in.
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Jan 6, 2022 17:05
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ninjoatse.cx posted:I really feel something is lost when not playing in person. I play with my co-workers, so attendance is really high. You can easily see when people are in for the day. When it involves going an extra step (even just logging online) it seems to fall by the wayside really quickly. I sympathize. It was a struggle at first converting our group online (almost two years ago now  ), and there's something about it that doesn't feel right.On the other hand, I've been able to play such a variety of games that I wouldn't have otherwise. But I had better luck playing on existing groups` servers, there are quite a few who do one-shots and even solicit people for longer campaigns, and let you try to run your own things, too.
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Jan 6, 2022 17:09
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KingKalamari posted:Perhaps not the most accurate word choice, but I think it's a little presumptuous to come into a game someone else is running and try to get them to switch to a different system. If you want to play a bad game because you're too scared of suggesting to the friend trying to recruit you that you'd rather play something else, that's your problem, and not a behaviour you should attempt to force onto other people.
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Jan 6, 2022 19:55
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Lemon-Lime posted:If you want to play a bad game because you're too scared of suggesting to the friend trying to recruit you that you'd rather play something else, that's your problem, and not a behaviour you should attempt to force onto other people. It’s always a trade off and who knows how everyone else feels about it?
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Jan 6, 2022 20:06
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Eclipse Phase is tons of fun to play. It's running it that sucks.
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Jan 6, 2022 20:12
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mellonbread posted:Eclipse Phase is tons of fun to play. It's running it that sucks. i think this is true of most enduring bad systems, and is one of the biggest reasons they endure
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Jan 6, 2022 20:20
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Leraika posted:what Don't ask me, I don't even understand what I was going for after rereading that O Tuxedo Catfish posted:i think this is true of most enduring bad systems, and is one of the biggest reasons they endure I think the argument has been made several times over the previous years, both in the chat as well as the FATAL thread that mechanical or design quality was not and will never be a standard which leads to enduring gameplay. Which is very sad, but then again, people are biased to take that which they know over that which they have to learn and invest themselves in.
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Jan 7, 2022 10:57
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Mr.Misfit posted:I think the argument has been made several times over the previous years, both in the chat as well as the FATAL thread that mechanical or design quality was not and will never be a standard which leads to enduring gameplay. Which is very sad, but then again, people are biased to take that which they know over that which they have to learn and invest themselves in. Yup. Also, design quality is orthogonal not just to enduring gameplay, but also to sales in general (which are driven by said gameplay). Therefore, if you can take six months to make a half-functional system for book X, or twelve months to make a well-designed system, both are going to sell just as well, so you wasted those six extra months that could kick out another half-functional book.
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Jan 7, 2022 14:27
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