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At that point you're still closer to Dark Heresy.
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Apr 8, 2022 12:47
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Halloween Jack posted:This is a tangent, but the Delta Green situation reminds me of Twin Peaks, which is full of cops. I think Lynch and Frost had an issue with that, which is why we eventually learn that all the cops are part of a deliberate conspiracy to infiltrate multiple federal agencies so they can use their resources to deal with the Black Lodge. This is also the tack Conspiracy X took, but as someone else pointed out this idea itself is a lot less “fun” in a post-QAnon world. (Honestly I’ve pretty much lost all my taste for playing around with crackpottery for similar reasons) KingKalamari posted:While it presents its own problems, I feel like "supernatural cops" tends to be better served if more akin to a privately funded investigative organization rather than an actual government entity. Either that or its an organization managed by one of the supernatural forces within the setting that's reliant on human operatives. This got me thinking about how this is not terribly far from Ghostbusters, which then made me want to run a supernatural investigations game where the group’s shadowy mentor is Dan Ackroyd.
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Apr 8, 2022 12:56
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Parkreiner posted:This is also the tack Conspiracy X took, but as someone else pointed out this idea itself is a lot less “fun” in a post-QAnon world. A lot makes sense realising Dan Ackroyd basically played himself as Ray. Also, apparently he has diagnosed Asperger's Syndrome, aka autism.
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Apr 8, 2022 14:14
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Having never touched delta green I’m getting the vibe that the best way to play it would be like the 80’s Blob
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Apr 8, 2022 15:25
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:ah ok I feel you there. I generally liked the setting more when its history was, "most people are illiterate and the SKs aren't going to share any details of how they gained power, so  "The post-Prism Pentad stuff did have some cool bits, though, that really added to the science/weird fantasy vibes, like Saragar, the City by the Last Sea, which was this paradisical remnant of the before times ruled by psions who had implanted their minds in obsidian spheres before the Cleansing Wars had ruined everything and had gone mad and paranoid in the millennia since. It had all sorts of Vic and Blood and Beneath the Planet of the Apes vibes going on.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:26
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:ah ok Same. I LOVED Dark Sun back in the day, but the metaplot was garbage and just drained my enthusiasm for the setting.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:33
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PeterWeller posted:I feel you there. I generally liked the setting more when its history was, "most people are illiterate and the SKs aren't going to share any details of how they gained power, so Having Tyr as a free city was a cool idea with lots of story hook potential (which was why the 4e setting defaulted to starting right after the SK of Tyr got got), but yeah, otherwise it wasn't great. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't those novels pretty early in the product line's life, too? Like there was barely time to get a campaign off the ground with the core boxed set before world-changing metaplot happened all over the place.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:33
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A lot of metaplot problems come down to how they come off as the writers basically being frustrated novelists bedgrudgingly letting the PCs be spectators in major events, maybe. Does The Great Pendragon Campaign count as metaplot?
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Apr 8, 2022 16:03
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A lot of metaplot problems come down to how they come off as the writers basically being frustrated novelists bedgrudgingly letting the PCs be spectators in major events, maybe. i know the Birthright lore writer / design lead in particular was literally a frustrated novelist laundering his fantasy setting to someone who would actually have it and even talks about it openly in the boxed set
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Apr 8, 2022 16:05
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Does The Great Pendragon Campaign count as metaplot? I wouldn't say so, metaplot usually requires the setting changing and evolving over the course of multiple books, usually without any involvement from the PCs or any way for them to change it. I forget how hard the GPC leans on "nothing the players do can stop the major events of the Arthurian cycle," if at all, but even if it does it's not like every Pendragon book published after it assumed your game's timeline had advanced to the grim, post-Arthurian British Iron Age or anything.
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Apr 8, 2022 16:16
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there's a difference between "players can't change the outcome" and "literally every important development happens outside the players' sphere of influence and if they're involved at all it's as barely-relevant lackeys" you could probably make a great game system or campaign about players being prisoners to fate bravely struggling against their inevitable destiny if that's actually what you set out to do and support it mechanically and thematically, vs. if it's absolutely a setting where four special people in the right place at the right time can change anything, but of all the important stuff is accomplished by the author's fanfic OCs Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Apr 8, 2022 |
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Apr 8, 2022 16:20
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TORG had an interesting take on the metaplot in that it published ways with its magazine thing on how groups were doing their own thing with it, but then it in the very last adventure where the PCs were meant to take down the big villain they mostly play spectator. I feel like this is the case with most heavy metaplot adventures as Aberrant also springs to mind where you just watch Divis Mal beat up Cestus Pax.
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Apr 8, 2022 16:24
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i know the Birthright lore writer / design lead in particular was literally a frustrated novelist laundering his fantasy setting to someone who would actually have it and even talks about it openly in the boxed set
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Apr 8, 2022 16:32
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FMguru posted:True, but Birthright itself was almost completely metaplot-free. Lots of background details, lots of powerful and important NPCs, but the setting is pretty much given to you to do with as you will - which makes sense, because the core concept is that you are running a small kingdom on a continent full of small, medium, and large kingdoms and have a lot of freedom of action in how you do things. No future history set in stone, no ongoing events that change the setting, no uber-NPCs driving the overall plot. yeah, amusingly so. maybe the self-awareness worked out for them  one of the wacky things i wanted to do back when i was a teenager reading AD&D books but not really having anyone to play with was to run a Birthright + Chronomancy campaign, just to see the absolute chaos that could potentially unfold with players traveling back to the battle of Mount Deismaar and coming back with True bloodlines or some poo poo if there were a good mechanical system i could slot in for the realm management stuff i might even go ahead and run it one of these days. maybe when Reign 2E finally comes out. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Apr 8, 2022 |
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Apr 8, 2022 16:34
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Does The Great Pendragon Campaign count as metaplot? I think one important difference is that the Pendragon plot is laid out beforehand. We all know in advance how things are going to go - Arthur becomes king, things go well, then things go badly. With an ongoing metaplot like Dark Sun's, you don't know where the setting is going to go, so it is much harder to plan things in the campaign in advance. Your PCs might go in one direction only to have that completely wiped out in future supplements, thus putting the GM in the position of having to re-work everything to fit their campaign or ignore the metaplot entirely. In Dark Sun, for example, some of the big, obvious PC goals are laid out in the first boxed set. There's a cruel Sorcerer-King ruling the default starting city. Do the PCs make it their goal to fight him, depose him, or kill him? Or maybe they turn to the dark side and work for him? Whoops, he's killed in the first published adventure by NPCs. There's also a dragon - do the PCs want to fight him, or deal with him? Whoops, he's soon killed by NPCs. And then there's a Big Bad ancient evil sorcerer who started the wars that ruined the world - guess what? He's killed by the NPCs. And on and on, with seemingly every interesting problem that was set up at the start of the game ending up resolved by the Uber NPCs, leaving the PCs following in their wake. But you don't know this at the start, so if your group has done any of those things - well, you're left either retconning things or ignoring anything published after the start of the line. You can't plan for it, because you don't know what will happen with an ongoing metaplot. I realize this is a moot point now, Dark Sun wrapped up long ago. But at the time it was very frustrating.
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Apr 8, 2022 16:48
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Dark Sun's early material strongly implied that it's taking place at the chronological end of all things. I got the notion that you couldn't leave Arthas because there was nowhere left to go. It made the defilers so much worse - nearly all life is used up left and they're squandering what's left Then metaplot was like "Lol it's just hard to find" because nothing good can persist in committee art.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:00
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GimpInBlack posted:I wouldn't say so, metaplot usually requires the setting changing and evolving over the course of multiple books, usually without any involvement from the PCs or any way for them to change it. I forget how hard the GPC leans on "nothing the players do can stop the major events of the Arthurian cycle," if at all, but even if it does it's not like every Pendragon book published after it assumed your game's timeline had advanced to the grim, post-Arthurian British Iron Age or anything. Well, the way the stats are set up you probably can’t kill anyone off early, and it’s broadly impossible to keep Uther alive, prevent Arthur from coming to power, stop the big love triangle or prevent the fall of Camelot. There’s a lot of poo poo that goes on between those that can change significantly.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:01
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Dawgstar posted:I feel like this is the case with most heavy metaplot adventures as Aberrant also springs to mind where you just watch Divis Mal beat up Cestus Pax.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:03
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, the way the stats are set up you probably can’t kill anyone off early, and it’s broadly impossible to keep Uther alive, prevent Arthur from coming to power, stop the big love triangle or prevent the fall of Camelot. There are also some explicitly optional plots specifically to throw a wrench in player assumptions, like Arthur's sons, the Enchantment of Britain, and presumably some other things. And of course, the ending specifically has the final battle continue, and encouraged to throw in literally every character you have to die in tragic glory, until only one PC remains to bring word back of what happened and throw Excalibur into the lake. Just comes to mind that The GPC is probably an example of how you do something like a metaplot right, actually acknowledging player agency, giving at least some acknowledgement of non-traditional PCs (is mentioned that militant pagan knights may seek the Grail seeing it differently from Christian ones) and iirc outright admits at times that the players can take things off the rails but they're in uncharted territory that the GM is going to have to figure out. Also, Lancelot technically has stats but he's ludicrously hard to beat even if he doesn't currently have his literal protection from God, while Galahad has the Cain 'you lose' rule. (and that just makes me picture Galahad meeting Cain)
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Apr 8, 2022 17:17
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I would love to see an ongoing set of books, setting books, where things changed but the PCs could change things, too. It's probably impossible, though. The 13th Age books do a pretty good job because they have to balance every group's unique relationships with the Icons, but not quite enough.
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Apr 8, 2022 17:17
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Halloween Jack posted:Come watch Evilgod beat up Peacefist! No this is NOT a superhero game comic books are for BABIES gently caress you The most hilarious part is how the Trinity metaplot managed to actually be pretty good, with the adventures putting the PCs at the center of it all.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:30
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Falstaff posted:Do you mean Blood Wars? Because that was awful, why would you want that. i've always been curious about Blood Wars but my one attempt to figure anything out anything about how it just lead to my eyes sliding right off of the rulebook and retaining zero information about it (it seems needlessly convoluted but I am not a card game guy), and i didn't exactly find anyone talking about having played it and what that's like. what's non-functional about it and how do they fix it?
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Apr 8, 2022 21:31
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To go back to Delta Green for a second, any kind of deep dive into the history of American intelligence should show there's a huge amount of real-life horror in there. There's def something there for a good mythos game. Probably too dark for most people though. Edit: And I don't mean that in a dismissive way either. poo poo is dark.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:34
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MonsieurChoc posted:To go back to Delta Green for a second, any kind of deep dive into the history of American intelligence should show there's a huge amount of real-life horror in there. There's def something there for a good mythos game. Probably too dark for most people though. The actual MKUltra was hosed up.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:42
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MKUltra started with “ex-nazi Scientists recreate the Spencer Mansion, but with POWs” and only got worse
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Apr 8, 2022 21:46
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The Jakarta method, MKUltra, Gladio, CHAOS, etc. When I was reading Chaos I got an idea for a Fall of Delta Green campaign set around Hollywood in the 60s, and I'm never gonna run it.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:55
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The Electric R'lyeh Acid Test
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Apr 8, 2022 21:56
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Kobold Sex Tape posted:i've always been curious about Blood Wars but my one attempt to figure anything out anything about how it just lead to my eyes sliding right off of the rulebook and retaining zero information about it (it seems needlessly convoluted but I am not a card game guy), and i didn't exactly find anyone talking about having played it and what that's like. what's non-functional about it and how do they fix it? To be entirely honest, it's been such a long time I might be getting the details wrong. But I was really into Planescape at the time, as was a friend, so we picked up some starters and a couple of boosters back when the game was brand new. We read through the rules, put together our decks, set up our game and then... realized the rules didn't actually tell us how to attack. We were tempted to try to handle attacks MtG style, but seemed like a non-starter to us (it contradicted other rules-as-written, but the details of which rule and how are lost to the ethers of time.) The rules told you how to win, but how to get there?
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Apr 8, 2022 22:32
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Halloween Jack posted:Come watch Evilgod beat up Peacefist! No this is NOT a superhero game comic books are for BABIES gently caress you Aberrant also holds the record for most pointlessly snide sidebar. "You are NOT THE AVENGERS even though you can play as part of a group who wear matching costumes who fight powered villains and stop natural disasters."
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Apr 9, 2022 00:03
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Throwing a Delta Green comment over in the Philosophy thread rather than keep beating a dead horse here because "If you want to talk about what kind of play a particular ruleset encourages and how it is framed to players, how player choice influences gameplay, etc then this is the place to do it." And I do want to talk about the kind of play Delta Green encourages, with minimal discussion of Detwiller.
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Apr 9, 2022 00:03
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Just replace cops in media with in-over-their-head public servants of other types. Postal worker on assignment has to deliver a package to bigfoot. Firefighters solving the mystery of "who burnt this poo poo down." Some science technicians in the future have to stop an alien invasion or whathaveyou
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Apr 9, 2022 02:43
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Improbable Lobster posted:Just replace cops in media with in-over-their-head public servants of other types. Postal worker on assignment has to deliver a package to bigfoot. Firefighters solving the mystery of "who burnt this poo poo down." Some science technicians in the future have to stop an alien invasion or whathaveyou Meter Maids trying to solve who left all these driverless cars around town.
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Apr 9, 2022 03:01
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I wonder if it would be fun to play as something National Park Service-adjacent. It would explain why the characters are federal employees with esoteric survival skills, firearms access and training, and absolutely not enough funding.
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Apr 9, 2022 03:33
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Improbable Lobster posted:Just replace cops in media with in-over-their-head public servants of other types. Postal worker on assignment has to deliver a package to bigfoot. Firefighters solving the mystery of "who burnt this poo poo down." Some science technicians in the future have to stop an alien invasion or whathaveyou At that point you solve another problem, too, because the question of "why don't we just call the cops" is answered with "because your department have had to work with them before and you know exactly how incompetent they are"
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Apr 9, 2022 08:11
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https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-nft-gripnr-blockchain-dnd-ttrpg-1848686984 So someone is apparently trying to make take NFTs and use them for D&D character sheets. This has to be the stupidest idea ever that completely misses the point of playing RPGs. The best part of the article is when the writer just says it fundamentally misses the point.
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Apr 9, 2022 12:54
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Arrrthritis posted:Meter Maids trying to solve who left all these driverless cars around town. Jonny Nexus wrote that by far the best secret conspiracy investigators would be gas fitters. They can enter any building to read the meter, have free access to maintenance rooms to perform safety inspections, and if a building is destroyed by a gas explosion nobody ever considers it may have been rigged by the gas men.
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Apr 9, 2022 13:55
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MadScientistWorking posted:https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-nft-gripnr-blockchain-dnd-ttrpg-1848686984 It's wild how terrible of an idea it is, which I guess is the point of every NFT venture more sophisticated than "ugly jpeg trading card." It's really up there in how it feels very much like outsiders intruding on a space and completely misunderstanding what people use it for. Like here's their basic pitch: quote:Gripnr plans to generate 10,000 random D&D player characters (PCs), assign a “rarity” to certain aspects of each (such as ancestry and class), and mint them as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Each NFT will include character stats and a randomly-generated portrait of the PC designed in a process overseen by Gripnr’s lead artist Justin Kamerer. Additional NFTs will be minted to represent weapons and equipment. They're presumably "randomly generating" a character, which I guess must mean assigning character art and a character sheet image to an NFT. I assume the sheet is an image because they also say you're going to have to loving re-mint your sheet every time you update it, so it can't only be a URL to an adjustable sheet: quote:Every time a user wants to perform a function on the Polygon blockchain—like adjusting the character level on a NFT-PC—they have to pay a gas fee, a tiny charge that helps fund the computational resources required to make the change. This means on the Gripnr protocol, there will be two gas fees per game that players must pay. Gripnr says it will keep fees down by operating on Polygon rather than another, more popular blockchain server system, like Ethereum (more on this later). And like, the point of this all is to level characters up and make them valuable and then sell them off when you're tired of using them or they're sufficiently valuable. But who would really want to go out and buy a pre-used player character? And that character art that's locked to your sheet is going to become pretty outdated if your upgraded gear stops matching what the character is wearing on the sheet, or like any other visual changes a player character goes through in a campaign? And if these are all pregenerated games then that means the loot is fixed, right? Or at least has fixed loot tables? So is this just going to turn into a substantially duller version of MMO raiding for loot drops to optimize your character's gear? Not that we have anything to go on as far as what exactly this gameplay would involve. They're not even going to deploy a game until after they mint their first wave of 10,000 NFTs: quote:Gripnr plans to reveal their protocol at the end of 2022, during Phase 5 of its development, but that is after it plans to mint 10,000 NFTs and release them this spring in both an exclusive presale (Phase 2) and a public reveal (Phase 3). Gripnr will not actually launch its play platform until Phase 6, which means that investors may have to stick around for months before their investment can appreciate through gameplay. And then there's the whole problem of who the gently caress is going to run these games. It sounds like they're expecting people to volunteer to GM for a bit of a crypto stipend, and then other people to regulate and approve the sessions so they get payout? And they might hold one precious NFT hostage to ensure good behavior? quote:In a scenario where a D&D character’s successes increase its real-world monetary value, there’s incentive for players and game masters to abuse gameplay—or even just fake a game, inputting values onto the NFT without actually playing—in order to artificially inflate the value of their NFT-PCs. These are all miserable deterrents to GMing, but a GM going to be needed to run these games in order for people to actually level up and upgrade their characters. The pool of potential player to potential GMs in TTRPGs is already massively unbalanced, and this all reads like poo poo that's going to heavily incentivize playing over GMing in a way I don't see ever working out. So yeah tl;dr is this is going to cave in on itself immediately, but at least we can point and laugh at the whole process. The article goes into more about the nonexistent community, the way it plays down the real world impact burning all that electricity for nothing has, and the "carpetbagging" energy of the whole endeavor, but I'll drop one more block quote here to admire: quote:One of the most important people at Gripnr is its president and head of product, Patrick Comer. In a call with io9, he was perfectly pleasant, generous with his time, and happy to answer questions. He is not a scammer, he’s not looking to create a get rich quick scheme, and he clearly, obviously, loves Dungeons & Dragons. But he also comes across as naďve: A puppy with Web3 access, millions in his bank account, and no game design experience.
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Apr 9, 2022 18:26
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So they are literally trying to make a tabletop version of a pay-to-win MMO, but expecting other people to run it.
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Apr 9, 2022 18:54
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hyphz posted:So they are literally trying to make a tabletop version of a pay-to-win MMO, but expecting other people to run it. Externalizing Costs is how NFTs work, so it's not that surprising.
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Apr 9, 2022 18:56
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hyphz posted:So they are literally trying to make a tabletop version of a pay-to-win MMO, but expecting other people to run it. Hell yeah bro, ready to ride Analogue 4-hour WoW Raid to the Mooooon?
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Apr 9, 2022 19:00
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